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Charles Dickens 



Charles Dickens 



A Critical Study 



GEORGE GISSING 

Author of Denzil Quarrler 
In the Year of Jubilee 



3^ 



I 




New York 

Dodd, Mead and Company 

1898 






X^J- 



Copyright, 1898, 
By Dodd, Mead and Company. 

11^ 21^^ f^ 



mnibersitg Press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 



Contents 

Chapter P*^^ 

I His Times i 

II The Growth of Man and Writer i6 

III The Story-Teller 49 

IV Art, Veracity, and Moral Purpose 78 
V Characterization 106 

VI Satiric Portraiture 141 

VII Women and Children 170 

VIII Humour and Pathos 215 

IX Style M^ 

X The Radical 255 

XI Comparisons 283 

XII The Latter Years 299 



Charles Dickens 

CHAPTER I 

HIS TIMES 

More than a quarter of a century has now 
elapsed since the death of Charles Dickens. 
The time which shaped him and sent him 
forth is so far behind us, as to have become a 
matter of historical study for the present gen- 
eration ; the time which knew him as one of 
its foremost figures, and owed so much to the 
influences of his wondrous personality, is al- 
ready made remote by a social revolution of 
which he watched the mere beginning. It 
seems possible to regard Dickens from the 
standpoint of posterity ; to consider his career, 
to review his literary work, and to estimate his 
total activity in relation to an age which, intel- 
ligibly speaking, is no longer our own. 

When Queen Victoria came to the throne 
Charles Dickens was twenty-five years old. 
To say that he was twenty in the year 1832 



2 CHARLES DICKENS 

is to point more significantly the period of his 
growth into manhood. At least a year before 
the passing of that Reform Bill which was to 
give political power to English capitalism (a 
convenient word of our day) Dickens had begun 
work as a shorthand writer, and as journal- 
ist. Before 1837 he had written his Sketches, 
had published them in volumes which gave 
some vogue to the name of " Boz," and 
was already engaged upon Pickwick, In short, 
Dickens's years of apprenticeship to life and 
literature were those which saw the rise and 
establishment of the Middle Class, commonly 
called "Great" — of the new power in political 
and social England which owed its develop- 
ment to coal and steam and iron mechanism. 
By birth superior to the rank of proletary, in- 
ferior to that of capitalist, this young man, 
endowed with original genius, and with the 
invincible vitality demanded for its exercise 
under such conditions, observed in a spirit of 
lively criticism, not seldom of jealousy, the 
class so rapidly achieving wealth and rule. 
He lived to become, in all externals, and to 
some extent in the tone of his mind, a char- 
acteristic member of this privileged society ; 
but his criticism of its foibles, and of its grave 
shortcomings, never ceased. The landed pro- 
prietor of Gadshill could not forget (the great 



HIS TIMES 3 

writer could never desire to forget) a miserable 
childhood imprisoned in the limbo of squalid 
London ; his grudge against this memory was 
in essence a class feeling ; to the end his per- 
sonal triumph gratified him, however uncon- 
sciously, as the vindication of a social claim. 

Walter Scott, inheriting gentle blood and 
feudal enthusiasm, resisted to the last the 
theories of '32; and yet by irony of circum- 
stance owed his ruin to commercial enterprise. 
Charles Dickens, humbly born, and from first 
to last fighting the battle of those in like estate, 
wore himself to a premature end in striving to 
found his title of gentleman on something more 
substantial than glory. The one came into 
the world too late ; the other, from this point 
of view, was but too thoroughly of his time. 

A time of suffering, of conflict, of expansion, 
of progress. In the year of Dickens's birth 
(18 1 2) we read of rioting workmen who smash 
machinery, and are answered by the argument 
of force. Between then and 1 834, the date of 
the Poor Law Amendment Act, much more 
machinery is broken, power-looms and thresh- 
ing engines, north and south ; but hungry 
multitudes have no chance against steam and 
capital. Statisticians, with rows of figures, make 
clear to us the vast growth of population and 
commerce in these same years ; we are told, for 



4 CHARLES DICKENS 

instance, that between 1821 and 1841 the 
people of Sheffield and of Birmingham in- 
creased by 80 per cent. It is noted, too, that 
savings*-bank deposits increased enormously 
during the same years ; a matter for congratula- 
tion. Nevertheless, with the new Poor Law 
comes such a demand for new workhouses that 
in some four-and-twenty years we find an ex- 
penditure of five millions sterling in this hope- 
ful direction. To be sure, a habit of pauperdom 
was threatening the ruin of the country — or 
of such parts of it as could not be saved by 
coal and steam and iron. Upon the close of 
the Napoleonic wars followed three decades of 
hardship for all save the inevitably rich, and 
those who were able to take time by the fore- 
lock ; so that side by side we have the begin- 
nings of vast prosperity and wide prevalence 
of woe. Under the old law providing for the 
destitute by means of out-door relief, pauper- 
dom was doubtless encouraged ; but the change 
to sterner discipline could not escape the charge 
of harshness, and among those who denounced 
the new rule was Dickens himself Whilst 
this difference of opinion was being fought out 
came a series of lean years, failure of harvests, 
and hunger more acute than usual, which led 
to the movement known as Chartism (a hint 
that the middle-class triumph of '32 was by ro 



HIS TIMES 5 

means a finality, seeing that behind that great 
class was a class, numerically at all events, much 
greater) ; at the same time went on the Corn- 
law struggles. Reading the verses of Ebenezer 
Elliott, one cannot but reflect on the scope in 
England of those days for a writer of fiction 
who should have gone to work in the spirit of 
the Rhymer, without impulse or obligation to 
make his books amusing. But the novelist of 
homely life was already at his task, doing it in 
his own way^ picturing with rare vividness the 
England that he knew ; and fate had blest him 
with the spirit of boundless mirth. 

There are glimpses in Dickens of that wide- 
spread, yet obscure, misery which lay about 
him in his early years. As, for instance, where 
we read in Oliver Twisty in the description of 
the child's walk to London, that "in some 
villages large painted boards were fixed up ; 
warning all persons who begged within the 
district, that they would be sent to jail." And 
in his mind there must ever have been a back- 
ground of such knowledge, influencing his work, 
even when it found no place in the scheme of 
a story. 

In a rapid view of the early century, atten- 
tion is demanded by one detail, commonly for- 
gotten, and by the historian easily ignored, but 
a matter of the first importance as serving to 



6 CHARLES DICKENS 

illustrate some of DIckens*s best work. In 
1833, Lord Ashley (afterwards Lord Shaftes- 
bury) entered upon his long strife with stub- 
born conservatism and heartless interest on 
behalf of little children who worked for wages 
in English factories and mines. The law then 
in force forbade children under thirteen years 
of age to engage in such labour for more than 
thirteen hours a day ; legislators of that period 
were so struck by the humanity of the provi- 
sion that no eloquence could induce them to 
think of superseding it. Members of the re- 
formed House of Commons were naturally 
committed to sound economic views on supply 
and demand; they enlarged upon the immo- 
rality of interfering with freedom of contract ; 
and, when Lord Ashley was guilty of perse- 
vering in his anti-social craze, of standing all 
but alone, year after year, the advocate of 
grimy little creatures who would otherwise have 
given nobody any trouble, howling insult, or 
ingenious calumny, long served the cause of 
his philosophic opponents. 

Let anyone who is prone to glorify the com- 
mercial history of nineteenth-century England 
search upon dusty shelves for certain Reports 
of Commissioners in the matter of children's 
employments at this time of Lord Ashley's 
activity, and there read a tale of cruelty and 



HIS TIMES 7 

avarice which arraigns the memory of a genera- 
tion content so infamously to enrich itself 
Those reports make clear that some part, at 
all events, of modern English prosperity re- 
sults from the toil of children (among them 
babies of five and six), whose lives were spent 
in the black depths of coal pits and amid the 
hot roar of machinery. Poetry has found in- 
spiration in the subject, but no verse can make 
such appeal to heart and conscience as the 
businesslike statements of a Commission. 
Lord Ashley's contemporaries in Parliament 
dismissed these stories with a smile. Em- 
ployers of infant labour naturally would lend 
no ear to a sentimental dreamer ; but it might 
have been presumed that at all events in one 
direction, that of the church, voices would 
make themselves heard in defence of " these 
little ones." We read, however, in the phi- 
lanthropist's Diary : " In very few instances 
did any mill-owner appear on the platform 
with me ; in still fewer the representatives of 
any religious denomination." This quiet re- 
mark serves to remind one, among other things, 
that Dickens was not without his reasons for 
a spirit of distrust towards religion by law es- 
tablished, as well as towards sundry other 
forms of religion — the spirit which, especially 
in his early career, was often misunderstood as 



i 



8 CHARLES DICKENS 

hostility to religion in itself, a wanton mock- 
ing at sacred things. Such a fact should 
always be kept in mind in reading Dickens. 
It is here glanced at merely for its historical 
significance; the question of Dickens*s religious 
attitude will call for attention elsewhere. 

Dickens, if any writer, has associated him- 
self with the thought of suffering childhood. 
The circumstances of his life confined him, 
for the most part, to London in his choice of 
matter for artistic use, and it is especially the 
London child whose sorrows are made so vivid 
to us by the master's pen. But we know that 
he was well acquainted with the monstrous 
wickedness of that child labour in mines and 
mills, and find where he might the pathetic 
little figures useful to him in his fiction, he was 
always speaking, consciously, to an age re- 
markable for stupidity and heartlessness in the 
treatment of all its poorer children. Perhaps 
in this direction his influence was as great as 
in any. In recognizing this, be it remembered 
for how many years an Englishman of noble 
birth, one who, on all accounts, might have 
been thought likely to sway the minds of his 
countrymen to any worthy end, battled in vain 
and amid all manner of obloquy, for so simple 
a piece of humanity and justice. Dickens had 
a weapon more efficacious than mere honest 



HIS TIMES 9 

zeal. He could make people laugh ; and if 
once the crowd has laughed with you, it will 
not object to cry a little — nay, it will make 
good resolves, and sometimes carry them out. 

It was a time by several degrees harsher, 
coarser, and uglier than our own. Take that 
one matter of hanging. Through all his work 
we see Dickens preoccupied with the gallows ; 
and no wonder. In his Sketches there is the 
lurid story of the woman who has obtained 
possession of her son after his execution, and 
who seeks the aid of a doctor, in hope of re- 
storing the boy to life ; and in so late a book 
as Great Expectations occurs that glimpse of 
murderous Newgate, which is among his finest 
things. His description of a hanging, written 
to a daily paper, is said to have had its part in 
putting an end to public executions ; but that 
was comparatively late in his life, and at his 
most impressionable time the hanging of old 
and young, men and women, regularly served 
as one of the entertainments of Londoners. 
Undoubtedly, even in Dickens's boyhood, 
manners had improved to some extent upon 
those we see pictured in Hogarth, but from our 
present standpoint the difference, certainly in 
poorer London, is barely appreciable. It was 
an age in which the English character seemed 
bent on exhibiting all its grossest and meanest 



lo CHARLES DICKENS 

and most stupid characteristics. Sheer ugliness 
of everyday life reached a limit not easily sur- 
passed ; thickheaded national prejudice, in con- 
sequence of great wars and British victories, had 
marvellously developed ; aristocracy was losing 
its better influence, and power passing to a 
well-fed multitude, remarkable for a dogged 
practicality which, as often as not, meant fero- 
cious egoism. With all this, a prevalence of 
such ignoble vices as religious hypocrisy and 
servile snobbishness. Our own day has its 
faults in plenty ; some of them perhaps more 
perilous than the worst here noted of our an- 
cestors ; but it is undeniably much cleaner of 
face and hands, decidedly more graceful in its 
common habits of mind. 

One has but to open at any page of Pick- 
wick to be struck with a characteristic of social 
life in Dickens's youth, which implies so much 
that it may be held to represent the whole civi- 
lization in which he was born and bred. Mr. 
Pickwick and his friends all drank brandy ; 
drank it as the simplest and handiest refresh- 
ment, at home or abroad ; drank it at dawn or at 
midnight, In the retirement of the bedchamber, 
or by the genial fireside ; offered it as an invita- 
tion to good-fellowship, or as a reward of virtue 
in inferiors ; and on a coach-journey, whether 
in summer or winter, held it among indispen- 



HIS TIMES II 

sable comforts. " He," said Samuel Johnson, 
" who aspires to be a hero, must drink brandy ; " 
and in this respect the Pickwickians achieve 
true heroism. Of course they pay for their 
glory, being frequently drunk in the most fla- 
grant sense of the word ; but to say that they 
" come up smiling " after it is to use an inade- 
quate phrase — however appropriate to those 
times; he would indeed have been a sorry 
Pickwickian who owned to a morning's head- 
ache. If such a thing existed, unavowed, there 
was the proverbial remedy at hand — "a hair 
of the dog." It is conceivable that, in some age 
remote, a student of Pickwick might point, as 
an obvious explanation of the marvellous flow 
of vitality and merriment among the people of 
Dickens's day, to their glorious beverage, some- 
thing doubtless more ethereal and yet more 
potent than any drink known among later 
mortals — the- divine liquor called brandy. 

Amid this life of the young century — cruel, 
unlovely, but abounding in vital force — there 
arose two masters in the art of fiction. To 
one of them was given the task of picturing 
England on its brighter side, the world of rank 
and fashion and wealth, with but rare glances 
(these, however, more noteworthy than is 
generally recognized) at the populace below. 
The other had for his field that vast obscurity 



12 CHARLES DICKENS 

of lower town life which till then had never 
been turned to literary uses. Of the country- 
poor, at a somewhat earlier date, admirable 
presentment had been made in the verse of 
Crabbe, a writer (in truth the forerunner of 
what is now called " realism ") whose most un- 
merited neglect may largely be accounted for 
by the unfortunate vehicle of his work, the 
" riding-rhyme," which has become so dis- 
tasteful to the English ear ; but poverty amid 
a wilderness of streets, and that class of city 
population just raised above harsh necessity, 
no one had seriously made his theme in prose 
or verse. Thackeray and Dickens supple- 
ment each other, and, however wide apart the 
lives they depict, to a striking degree confirm 
each other's views of a certain era in the history 
of England. In their day, both were charged 
with partiality, with excessive emphasis. Both 
being avowedly satirists, the charge can be 
easily understood, and to a certain point may 
be admitted. In the case of Dickens, with 
whom alone I am here concerned, it will be 
part of my endeavour to vindicate him against 
the familiar complaint that, however trust- 
worthy his background, the figures designed 
upon it, in general, are mere forms of fantasy. 
On re-reading his work, it is not thus that 
Dickens's characters, on the whole, impress me. 



HIS TIMES 13 

With reserves which will appear in the course 
of my essay, I believe him to have been, what 
he always claimed to be, a very accurate painter 
of the human beings, no less than of the social 
conditions, he saw about him. He has not a 
wide scope ; he is always noticeably at his best 
in dealing with an ill-defined order of English 
folk, a class (or classes) characterized by dull- 
ness, prejudice, dogged individuality, and man- 
ners, to say the least, unengaging. From 
this order he chose the living figures of his 
narrative, and they appear to me, all in all, no 
less truly representative than the persons 
selected by Thackeray to illustrate a higher 
rank of life. Readers of Dickens who exclaim 
at the " unreality '* of his characters (I do not 
here speak of his conduct of a story) will gen- 
erally be found unacquainted with the English 
lower classes of to-day ; and one may remark in 
passing that English people are distinguished 
among nationalities by the profound mutual 
ignorance which separates their social ranks. 

In a recent publication I have seen it sum- 
marily observed that Dickens gives us types, 
not individuals ; types, moreover, of the most 
abstract kind, something like the figures in the 
old moralities ; embodied hypocrisy, selfish- 
ness, pride, and so on, masking as everyday 
mortals. This appears to me an unconsidered 



14 CHARLES DICKENS 

judgment, however common. Dickens's char- 
acters will pass before us and be attentively re- 
viewed ; speaking of them generally, I see in 
them, not abstractions, but men and women of 
such loud peculiarities, so aggressively individual 
in mind and form, in voice and habit, that they 
for ever proclaim themselves the children of a 
certain country, of a certain time, of a certain 
rank. Clothed abstractions do not take hold 
upon the imagination and the memory as these 
people of Dickens did from the day of their 
coming into life. The secret of this subtle 
power lay in the actuality of the figures them- 
selves. There are characters in Dickens 
(meant, moreover, to be leading persons of 
the drama) which have failed thus to make 
good their being; their names we may re- 
member, but all else has become shadowy ; 
and what is the reason of this vanishment, in 
contrast with the persistence of figures less im- 
portant ? Simply that here Dickens has pre- 
sented us with types, abstractions. The social 
changes of the last sixty years are not small ; 
but to anyone who really knows the lower 
middle class in London it will be obvious that 
many of the originals of Dickens still exist, 
still pursue the objectionable, or amusing, tenor 
of their way, amid new names and new forms 
of ugliness. Sixty years ago, grotesques and 



HIS TIMES 15 

eccentricities were more common than now- 
adays ; the Englishman, always angular and 
self-assertive, had grown flagrant in his ego- 
ism during the long period of combat with men- 
acing powers ? education had not set up its 
grindstone for all and sundry, and persons 
esteemed odd even in such a society abounded 
among high and low. For these oddities, 
especially among the poorer folk, Dickens 
had an eager eye ; they were offered to him 
in measure overflowing ; nowadays he would 
have to search for them amid the masses drilled 
into uniformity, but there they are — the same 
creatures diflterently clad. Precisely because 
his books are rich in extravagances of human 
nature is Dickens so true a chronicler of his 
day and generation. 

A time of ugliness : ugly religion, ugly law, 
ugly relations between rich and poor, ugly 
clothes, ugly furniture. What would Charles 
Dickens have made of all this had his genius 
been lacking in the grace of humour ? Yet it 
is not his humour alone that will preserve him 
for the delight of young and old no less than 
for the instruction of the studious. In his 
work there is a core of perpetuity ; to find it 
we must look back upon the beginnings of his 
life, and on the teaching which prepared him 
for his life's work. 



CHAPTER II 

THE GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 

Needless to recount in detail the biography of 
Charles Dickens. Living, he was regarded 
with a warmth of personal interest such as no 
other English writer ever inspired ; all the 
facts of his life which could rightly become 
public property (and some with which the 
public had no concern) were known to every 
contemporary reader ; and as yet they seem in 
no risk of being forgotten. 

By accident he was not born a Londoner, 
but his life in London began while he was yet 
a child. His earliest impressions, however, 
were received at Rochester and Chatham, where 
he went to what was called a school, and in the 
time at his ov/n disposal began to educate him- 
self in his own v/ay by reading the eighteenth- 
century novelists. A happy thing for Dickens, 
and for us, that he was permitted to pass these 
few years of opening life elsewhere than in 
London. He speaks of himself as " not a very 
robust child sitting in byeplaces near Roches- 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 17 

ter Castle, with a head full of Partridge, Strap, 
Tom Pipes, and Sancho Panza ; " better, from 
every point of view, than if he had gained 
his first knowledge of English fiction amid the 
brick walls of Camden Town. Dickens al- 
ways had a true love of the country, especially 
of that which is near to picturesque old towns 
of historic interest ; and this most precious 
characteristic, to which v/e owe some of the 
sweetest, freshest pages in his work, might 
never have developed in him but for the early 
years at Rochester. Very closely has he linked 
his memory with that district of Kent, — now- 
adays, of course, like every other district, 
easily accessible from London, all but robbed 
of the old charm. At Rochester begin the 
adventurous travels of Mr. Pickwick ; near 
Rochester stands the house of Gadshill ; and 
it was Rochester that he chose for the 
scene of his last story, the unfinished Edwin 
Drood. 

With London began unhappiness. David 
Copperfield has made universally familiar that 
figure of the poor little lad slaving at ignoble 
tasks in some by-way near the River Thames. 
David works for a wine-merchant, cleaning 
bottles ; his original had for taskmasters a firm 
of blacking-makers. We know how sorely 
this memory rankled in the mind of the sue- 



i8 CHARLES DICKENS 

cessful author ; he kept the fact from his wife 
till long after marriage, and, we are told, could 
never bear to speak to his children of that and 
the like endurances. This I have seen men- 
tioned as a proof of sensitiveness verging on 
snobbery ; but surely it is nothing of the kind. 
Dickens would not, like his pet aversion, Josiah 
Bounderby in Hard Times ^ proclaim from the 
house-tops that he had been a poor boy toiling 
for a few shillings a week, and most certainly 
he would have preferred to look back upon a 
childhood hke to that of his friends and neigh- 
bours ; but the true reason for his shrinking 
from this recollection lay in the fact that it in- 
volved a grave censure upon his parents. " It 
is wonderful to me," he writes, in the fragment 
of autobiography preserved by Forster {Life, 
Book I. 2), " how I could have been so easily 
cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to 
me that, even after my descent into the poor little 
drudge I had been since we came to London, 
no one had compassion enough on me — a 
child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, 
and soon hurt, bodily or mentally — to suggest 
that something might have been spared, as 
certainly it might have been, to place me at any 
common school. Our friends, I take it, were 
tired out. No one made any sign. My father 
and mother were quite satisfied. They could 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 19 

hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty- 
years of age, distinguished at a Grammar 
School, and going to Cambridge." In this 
passage the tone of feeling is unmistakeable ; 
as the boy had suffered from a sense of un- 
deserved humiliation, so did the man feel hurt 
in his deepest sensibilities whenever he reflected 
on that evil time. His silence regarding it 
was the most natural reserve. 

In middle age we find Dickens saying 
about his father that the longer he lived, the 
better man he thought him. To us the elder 
Dickens is inevitably Mr. Micawber, and who 
shall say that he has no affection for that type 
of genial impecuniosity ? To his father, no 
doubt, the novelist owed the happy tempera- 
ment which had so large a part in his success ; 
plainly, he owed little more. Of his mother, 
only one significant fact is recorded, viz. that 
when at lengthy an opportunity offered for the 
boy's escape from his drudgery in the blacking 
warehouse, Mrs. Dickens strongly objected 
to any such change. An unpleasant topic ; 
enough to recognize, in passing, that this inci- 
dent certainly was not without its permanent 
effect on the son's mind. 

The two years of childish hardship in 
London (i 822-1 824), which have resulted 
in one of the most picturesque and pathetic 



20 CHARLES DICKENS 

chapters that English literature can show, were 
of supreme importance in the growth of the 
novelist. Recollections of that time supplied 
him with a store of literary material upon 
which he drevv^ through all the years of his 
best activity. In the only possible way he 
learnt the life of obscure London ; himself a 
part of it, struggling and suffering in its sordid 
welter, at an age when the strongest impres- 
sions are received. It did not last long enough 
to corrupt the natural sweetness of his mind. 
Imagine Charles Dickens kept in the blacking 
warehouse for ten years; picture him striving 
vainly to find utterance for the thoughts that 
were in him, refused the society of any but 
boors and rascals, making, perhaps, a futile 
attempt to succeed as an actor, and in full 
manhood measuring the abyss which sun- 
dered him from all he had hoped ; it is only 
too easy, knowing the character of the man so 
well, to conceive what would have resulted. 
But at twelve years old he was sent to school, 
and from that day never lost a step on the 
path of worldly success. In spite of all, he 
was one of fortune's favourites, what he had 
undergone turned to his ultimate advantage, 
and the man who at twenty-four found him- 
self the most popular author of his time and 
country, might well be encouraged to see 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 21 

things on the cheery side, and to laugh with 
his multitudinous public. 

Dickens^s biographer makes a fanciful sug- 
gestion that the fact of his having observed 
low life at so tender an age (from ten to 
twelve) accounts for the purity of tone with 
which that life is treated in the novelist's 
v/orks. In its proper place, I shall take a 
different view of Dickens's method in this 
matter ; "it is not to be supposed for a mo- 
ment that the boy, familiar with London on 
its grimiest side, working in cellars, inhabit- 
ing garrets, eating in cookshops, visiting a 
debtors' prison (his father was there detained 
in the Marshalsea), escaped the contamination 
of his surroundings. London in all its foul- 
ness was stamped on the lad's memory. He 
escaped in time, that v/as all, and his most 
fortunate endowment did the rest. 

The year 1825, then, saw him at a day- 
school in North London ; the ordinary day- 
school of that time, which is as much as to say 
that it was just better than no school at all. 
One cannot discover that he learnt anything 
here, or from any other professed teacher, 
beyond the very elements of common knowl- 
edge. And here again is a point on which, 
throughout his life, Dickens felt a certain sore- 
ness ; he wished to be thought, wished to be. 



22 CHARLES DICKENS 

a well-educated man, yet was well aware that, 
in several directions, he could never make up 
for early defects of training. In those days it 
was socially more important than now to have 
received a " classical education,'* and with the 
classics he had no acquaintance. There is no 
mistaking the personal note in those passages 
of his books which treat of, or allude to, Greek 
and Latin studies in a satirical spirit. True, it 
is just as impossible to deny that, in this par- 
ticular field of English life, every sort of 
insincerity was rampant. Carlyle (who, by 
the by, was no Grecian) threw scorn upon 
"gerund-grinding," and with justice; Dickens 
delighted in showing classical teachers as dreary 
humbugs, and in hinting that they were such 
by the mere necessity of the case. Mr. Feeder, 
B.A., grinds, with his Greek or Latin stop 
on, for the edification of Toots. Dr. Blimber 
snuffles at dinner-time, " It is remarkable that 
the Romans — ", and every terrified boy as- 
sumes an air of impossible interest : even Cop- 
perfield's worthy friend. Dr. Strong, potters 
in an imbecile fashion over a Greek dictionary 
which there is plainly not the slightest hope of 
his ever completing. Numerous are the side-hits 
at this educational idol of wealthy England. 
For all that, remember David's self-congratu- 
lation when, his schooldays at an end, he feels 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 23 

that he is " well-taught ; " in other words, that 
he is possessed of the results of Dr. Strong's 
mooning over dead languages. Dickens had 
far too much sense and honesty to proclaim a 
loud contempt where he knew himself igno- 
rant. For an example of the sort of thing 
impossible to him, see the passage in an early 
volume of the Goncourts' Diary, where the 
egregious brothers report a quarrel with St. 
Victor, a defender of the Ancients; they, in 
their monumental fatuity, ending the debate 
by a declaration that a French novel called 
Adolphe was from every point of view prefer- 
able to Homer. Dickens knew better than 
this ; but, having real ground for satire in the 
educational follies of the day, indulged that 
personal pique of which I spoke in the first 
chapter, and doubtless reflected that he, at all 
events, had not greatly missed the help of the 
old heathens in. his battle of life. When his 
own boys had passed through the approved 
curriculum of Public School and University, 
he viewed the question more liberally. One 
of the most pleasing characters in his later 
work, Mr. Crisparkle in Edwin Broody is a 
classical tutor, and without shadow of humbug ; 
indeed, he is perhaps the only figure in all 
Dickens presenting a fair resemblance to the 
modern type of English gentleman. 



24 CHARLES DICKENS 

There is no use in discussing -\vhat a man 
might have done had he been in important 
respects another man than he was. That his 
lack of education meant a serious personal 
defect in Dickens appears only too plainly 
throughout the story of his life ; that it shows 
from time to time as a disadvantage in his 
books there is no denying. I am not con- 
cerned with criticism such as Macaulay*s dis- 
gust at Hard TimeSy on the ground that it 
showed a hopeless misconception of the prob- 
lems and methods of Political Economy ; it 
seems to me that Dickens here produced a 
book quite unworthy of him, and this wholly 
apart from the question of its economic teach- 
ing. At the same time, I feel that the faults 
of such a book as Hard Times must, in some 
measure, be attributed to Dickens's lack of ac- 
quaintance with various kinds of literature, 
with various modes of thought. The theme, 
undoubtedly, is admirable, but the manner of 
its presentment betrays an extraordinary naivete^ 
plainly due to untrained intellect, a mind in- 
sufficiently stored. His work offers several 
such instances. And whilst on this point, it 
is as well to remember that Dickens's contem- 
poraries did not join unanimously in the chorus 
of delighted praise which greeted each new 
book ; now and then he met with severe criti- 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 25 

cism from the graver literary organs, and In 
most cases such censure directed itself against 
precisely this weakness. It was held that 
Dickens set himself to treat of questions be- 
yond his scope, and made known his views 
with an acrimony altogether unjustified in one 
who had only prejudice, or, at best, humane 
sentiment, to go upon. Some of his letters 
prove how keenly he felt this kind of criticism, 
which of course had no effect but to confirm 
him in his own judgments and habits of utter- 
ance. In truth, though there were numbers of 
persons who could point out Dickens's short- 
comings as a thinker, only one man could pro- 
duce literature such as his, enriching a large 
part of the human race with inestimable gifts of 
joy and kindness. He went his way in spite 
of critics, and did the work appointed him. 

Of the results of his neglected boyhood as 
they appear in the details of his life, something 
will be said hereafter. It would have been 
wonderful if from such beginnings there had 
developed, by its own force, a well-balanced 
character. In balance, in moderation, Dickens 
was conspicuously lacking, whether as man or 
artist. Something more of education, even in 
the common sense of the word, would assuredly 
have helped to subdue this fault in one so 
largely endowed with the genial virtues. He 



26 CHARLES DICKENS 

need not have lost his originality of mind. 
We can well enough conceive Charles Dickens 
ripening to the degree of wisdom which would 
have assured him a more quietly happy, and 
therefore a longer, life. But to that end other 
masters are needed than such as pretended to, 
and such as really did, instruct the unregarded 
son of the navy pay-officer. 

If one asks (as well one may) how it came 
to pass that an uneducated man produced at 
the age of three-and-twenty a book so original 
in subject and treatment, so wonderfully true 
in observation, and on the whole so well writ- 
ten as Sketches by Boz, there is of course but 
one answer : the man had genius. But even 
genius is not independent of external aid. 
" Pray, sir," asked someone of the elder Dick- 
ens, " where was your son educated ? " And 
the parent replied, "Why, indeed, sir — ha! 
ha ! — he may be said to have educated him- 
self! " How early this self-instruction began 
we have already had a hint in that glimpse of 
the child sitting by Rochester Castle "with a 
head full of Partridge, Strap and Tom Pipes 
and Sancho Panza." Sancho Panza, it may 
be presumed, is known even to the present 
generation ; but who were those others ? 
Indeed, who knows anything nowadays of 
the great writers who nourished the young 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 27 

mind of Dickens ? Smollett, Fielding — per- 
haps, after all, it is as well that these authors 
do not supply the amusement of our young 
people. When eight or nine years old, Charles 
Dickens read them rapturously, all but got 
them by heart, and he asserts, what may be 
readily believed, that they did him no jot of 
harm. But these old novelists are strong 
food ; a boy who is to enrich the literature of 
the world may well be nourished upon them ; 
other boys, perchance, had better grow up on 
milder nutriment ! 

The catalogue of his early reading is most 
important ; let it be given here, as Dickens 
gives it in David Copperfield^ with additions 
elsewhere supplied. Roderick Random^ Pere- 
grine Pickle^ Humphrey Clinker^ Tom Jones^ The 
Vicar of Wakefield^ Don ^ixote^ Gil BlaSy Robin- 
son Crusoe^ The Arabian Nights^ and Tales of 
the Genii ; also volumes of Essayists ; The 
Taller, The Spectator, The Idler, The Citizen 
of the World, and a Collection of Farces edited 
by Mrs. Inchbald. These the child had found 
in his father's house near Rochester ; he car- 
ried them with him in his head to London, 
and there found them his solace through the 
two years of bitter bondage. The importance 
of this list lies not merely in the fact that it 
certifies Dickens's earliest reading ; it remained 



28 CHARLES DICKENS 

throughout his whole life (with very few excep- 
tions) the sum of books dear to his memory 
and to his imagination. Those which he read 
first were practically the only books which 
influenced Dickens as an author. We must 
add the Bible (with special emphasis, the New 
Testament), Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and 
Sterne; among his own contemporaries, Scott 
and Carlyle. Therewith we may close this tale 
of authors whom he notably followed through 
his youth of study and his career as man of 
letters. After success came to him (and it 
came so early) he never had much time for 
reading, and probably never any great inclina- 
tion. We are told that he especially enjoyed 
books of travel, but they served merely as 
recreation. His own travels in Europe sup- 
plied him with no new authors (one hears of 
his trying to read some French novelist, and 
finding the dialogue intolerably dull), nor with 
any new mental pursuit. He learned to speak 
in French and Italian, but made very little use 
of the attainment. Few really great men can 
have had so narrow an intellectual scope. 
Turn to his practical interests, and there indeed 
we have another picture ; I speak at present 
only of the book-lore which shaped his mind, 
and helped to direct his pen. 

To this early familiarity with English classics 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 29 

is due the remarkable command of language 
shown even in his first sketches. When I 
come to speak of Dickens's style, it will be 
time enough to touch upon faults which are 
obvious ; vulgarisms occur in his apprentice 
work, but the wonder is that they were not 
more frequent ; assuredly they must have been, 
but for the literary part of that self-education 
which good fortune had permitted him. A 
thorough acquaintance with the books above 
mentioned made him master of that racy tongue 
which was demanded by his subject, and by his 
way of regarding it. Destined to a place in 
the list of writers characteristically English, he 
found in the works of his predecessors a natural 
inheritance, and without need of studious re- 
flection came equipped to his task. 

No, they are not read nowadays, the old 
masters of the English novel ; yet they must 
needs be read .by anyone who would under- 
stand the EngHsh people. To the boy 
Dickens, they presented pictures of life as it 
was still going on about him ; not much had 
altered ; when he himself began to write fiction, 
his scenes, his characters made a natural con- 
tinuance of the stories told by Smollett, Field- 
ing, Sterne, and Goldsmith. To us, at the 
end of the nineteenth century, Nicholas Nick- 
lehy tells of a social life as far away as that 



30 CHARLES DICKENS 

described in Roderick Random ; yet in another 
respect these books are nearer to us, of more 
familiar spirit, than the novel — whatever it 
may be — newest from the press and in great- 
est vogue. They are a part of our nationality ; 
in both of them runs our very life-blood. 
However great the changes on the surface of 
life, England remains, and is likely to remain, 
the same at heart with the England of our 
eighteenth-century novelists. By communing 
with them, one breaks through the disguises 
of modern fashion, gauges the importance of 
" progress," and learns to recognize the his- 
torically essential. Before the end of this 
essay, I shall have often insisted on the value 
of Dickens's work as an expression of national 
life and sentiment. Born, of course, with the 
aptitude for such utterance, he could not have 
had better schooling than in the lumber-room 
library at Rochester. There he first heard the 
voice of his own thoughts. And to those 
books we also must turn, if the fury of to-day's 
existence leave us any inclination or leisure for 
a study of the conditions which produced 
Charles Dickens. 

His choice of a pseudonym for the title-page 
of his Sketches is significant, for, as he tells us 
himself, " Boz " was simply a facetious nasal 
contraction, used in his family, of the nickname 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 31 

Moses, the original Moses being no other than 
the son of Dr. Primrose in the Vicar of Wake- 
field. There is a peculiar happiness in this 
close link between Goldsmith and Dickens, 
spirits so much akin in tender humanity. In- 
deed, Dickens had a special affection for the 
Vicar of Wakefield, When thinking of his first 
Christmas book (and who could more have 
delighted in the Carol than Oliver Goldsmith ?), 
he says that he wishes to write a story of about 
the same length as The Vicar, One could 
easily draw a parallel between the two authors; 
and it is certain that among the influences 
which made Dickens, none had more impor- 
tance than the example of Goldsmith's fiction. 
A word is called for by the two books, 
among those mentioned above, which are least 
connected with English traditions and English 
thought. The Arabian Nights and 'Tales of 
the Genii were cjertainly more read in Dickens's 
day than in ours ; probably most children 
at present would know nothing of Eastern 
romance but for the Christmas pantomime. 
Oddly enough, Dickens seems to make more 
allusions throughout his work to the Arabian 
Nights than to any other book or author. 
He is not given to quoting, or making literary 
references ; but those fairy tales of the East 
supply him with a good number of illustra- 



32 CHARLES DICKENS 

tions, and not only in his early novels. Is 
it merely fanciful to see in this interest, not 
of course an explanation, but a circumstance 
illustrative of that habit of mind which led 
him to discover infinite romance in the 
obscurer life of London? Where the ordi- 
nary man sees nothing but everyday habit, 
Dickens is filled with the perception of mar- 
vellous possibilities. Again and again he has 
put the spirit of the Arabian Nights into his 
pictures of life by the River Thames. Some 
person annoyed him once by speaking of his 
books as " romances,'' and his annoyance is 
quite intelligible, for a "romance" in the 
proper sense of the word he never wrote; 
yet the turn of his mind was very difi^erent 
from that exhibited by a modern pursuer of 
veracity in fiction. He sought for wonders 
amid the dreary life of common streets ; and 
perhaps in this direction also his intellect was 
encouraged when he made acquaintance with 
the dazzling Eastern fables, and took them 
alternately with that more solid nutriment of 
the eighteenth-century novel. 

The Essayists must have done much for 
the refining of his intelligence; probably his 
reading of Addison and Steele came nearer 
to education, specially understood, than any- 
thing else with which he was occupied in boy- 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 33 

hood. Long afterwards, when he had thought 
of a periodical publication (which was to 
become Household IVords)^ he wrote about it 
to Forster : " I strongly incline to the no- 
tion of a kind of Spectator (Addison's) — very 
cheap and pretty frequent." How strange it 
sounds to our ears ! What editor would 
nowadays dream of taking Addison as his 
model? But Dickens was so much nearer 
to the age of graceful leisure, and, on one 
side of his personality, had profited so well 
by its teaching. 

Of Sir Walter Scott, I believe, he never 
speaks with any special enthusiasm, and, as 
regards the purely Scottish novels, this is easily 
understood; they could make no strong ap- 
peal to the mind of Dickens. But it seems 
to me that Scott's influence is not to be mis- 
taken in the narrative of Barnaby Rudge. 

One artist there was, an artist with the 
brush and an engraver, of whom it may be 
said that Dickens assuredly learnt, though I 
cannot see the possibility of comparing their 
work, of which Forster and others make so 
much. The genius of Hogarth differed 
widely from that of the author of Pickwick, 
but it was inevitable that such profound 
studies of life and character should attract, 
even fascinate, a mind absorbed in contem- 

3 



34 CHARLES DICKENS 

plation of poverty and all its concomitants. 
Added thereto was the peculiar interest in 
the artist's name, which resulted to Dickens 
from his marriage at the age of twenty-four 
with Miss Hogarth, this lady claiming descent 
from her great namesake. Both men were 
strenuous moralists, but it would be hard to 
show any other point of resemblance in their 
methods of presenting fact. As to their 
humour, I am unable to find anything in 
Hogarth which can for a moment be com- 
pared with that quality in Dickens. Hogarth 
smiles, it is true, but how grimly! There 
prevails in him an uncompromising spirit of 
which the novelist had nothing whatever. 
Try to imagine a volume of fiction produced 
by the artist of Gin Lane^ of The Harlot's 
Progress y and put it beside the books which, 
from Pickwick onwards, have been the delight 
of English homes. Puritans both of them, 
Hogarth shows his religion on the sterner 
side; Dickens, in a gentle avoidance of what- 
soever may give offence to the pure in heart, 
the very essence of his artistic conscience being 
that compromise which the other scorned. 
In truth, as artists they saw differently. 
Dickens was no self-deceiver ; at any moment 
his steps would guide him to parts of London 
where he could behold, and had often beheld. 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 3s 

scenes as terrible as any that the artist struck 
into black and white; he looked steadily at 
such things, and, at the proper time, could 
speak of them. But when he took up the 
pen of the story-teller, his genius constrained 
him to such use, such interpretation, of bitter 
fact as made him beloved, not dreaded, by 
readers asking, before all else, to be soothingly 
entertained. On this point I shall have more 
to say presently. Enough here, that Hogarth 
undoubtedly helped to concentrate the young 
writer's mind on the subjects he was to treat 
in his own way. Evidence, were it needed, is 
found in the preface to Oliver Twist, where, 
after speaking of the romantic types of rascal- 
ity then popular in fiction, he declares that 
only in one book has he seen the true thief 
depicted, namely, in the works of Hogarth. 

A friend, himself a painter, suggests to me 
that the true parallel in this sort would be 
between Dickens and Wilkie. Certainly there 
is strong resemblance, though, it must be re- 
membered, only on one plane of Dickens's 
observant and imaginative powers ; Wilkie's 
spirit, in his familiar pictures, strikes one as 
no less tolerant, no less mirthful, than that of 
the greater man in whose work he was known 
to delight; he has the same inborn appre- 
ciation of homeliness, the same seeking after 



26 CHARLES DICKENS 

quaint truth in the commonplace. With an- 
other contemporary artist Dickens had closer 
relations. The Sketches were illustrated by 
George Cruikshank ; so was Oliver Twisty and 
a foolish bit of gossip, troublesome at the time, 
would have it that Oliver's history had come 
into being at the suggestion of certain draw- 
ings of Cruikshank's own. For my own part, I 
can enjoy only a few of the famous woodcuts in 
these early books ; it appears to me that a man 
of less originality than Cruikshank's, the late 
Fred Barnard, has done incomparably better 
work in his pictures to the novels. But in 
their leaning to the grotesque, author and illus- 
trator were so much alike that one can at all 
events understand the baseless story which 
Dickens took all possible trouble to refute. 
Some years afterwards, when Cruikshank pub- 
lished his picture called The Bottle, intended 
as a blow in the cause of temperance, Dickens 
constantly spoke and wrote of it with high 
admiration, though he had fault to find with 
the manner in which its lesson v/as conveyed. 
There could not but exist much sympathy 
between these workers on lines so similar in 
different arts ; but beyond the fact of Dickens's 
liking for the artist's designs from the begin- 
ning of his own career, nothing, so far as I 
know, can be advanced in proof of his having 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 37 

been guided or prompted by Cruikshank's 
genius. 

It was in imitation of his father's example 
that Dickens, by learning shorthand, prepared 
himself to become, first a reporter in one of 
the offices in Doctors'-Commons (the remark- 
able region so well known from David Copper- 
field), and after that in the gallery of the 
House. Thus far had he got at nineteen. 
With the vivacious energy which was always 
his leading characteristic, he made himself, 
forthwith, a journalist of mark in the sphere 
to which he was restricted. Prior to this, 
whilst earning his livelihood as a clerk in an 
attorney's office, he had somehow read a good 
deal at the British Museum, and had devoted 
most of his evenings to the theatre. It may 
safely be said that the evening amusement was 
much more important in its results than any 
formal study he undertook ; unless, indeed, — a 
not improbable conjecture, — he, like Charles 
Lamb, sought the reading-room of the 
Museum chiefly for dramatic literature. At 
this time of his life, Dickens had resolved 
upon a theatrical career ; whether as dramatist 
or actor he did not much mind, feeling equal 
to either pursuit. His day's drudgery, how- 
ever thoroughly performed, was endured only 
in the hope of release as soon as he found his 



38 CHARLES DICKENS 

chance upon the stage. Of course he would 
have succeeded in either capacity, though with 
a success far less brilliant than fate had in 
store for him. He did in the end become, 
if not strictly an actor, at all events a public 
entertainer whose strongest efforts were pro- 
duced by the exercise of melodramatic talent ; 
as an amateur, he acted frequently throughout 
his life. His attempts at dramatic author- 
ship — The Strange Gentleman^ a farce played 
in 1836; The Village Coquettes ^ a libretto, pro- 
duced in the same year ; and The Lamplighter y 
a farce written in 1838, but never acted — 
gave no serious proof of his powers in this 
direction ; they were hurriedly thrown off at 
the time when his literary fame was already 
beginning. But in the year or two before he 
wrote his Sketches^ when the consciousness of 
vague ability and high ambition made him 
restive in his mechanical calling of shorthand 
writer, he applied to the manager of Covent 
Garden Theatre for an opportunity of show- 
ing what he could do. The accident of ill- 
ness interfered with an appointment granted 
him, and, owing to some start in journalism, 
the application was not renewed. Plainly 
Dickens came very near indeed to entering 
upon the actor's life, and so close throughout 
is his connection with the theatrical world. 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 39 

that one cannot glance at this incident as a 
mere detail in the story of his youth. It 
declares a natural bent of mind, not the pass- 
ing inclination which is so often felt by lads 
more or less gifted. 

When, in the full enjoyment of his fancy, 
Dickens amused himself and served charitable 
ends, by getting up dramatic performances, we 
note a significance in his selection of a play. 
He chose Ben Jonson's Every Man in His 
Humour^ himself taking the part of Bobadil. 
How early he read Ben Jonson, I am unable 
to say ; I should like to be assured that it was 
in those hours spent at the British Museum, 
when all his work yet lay before him. One 
can well imagine the delight of Dickens in a 
first acquaintance with rare Ben. Forster gives 
an excellent description of the zeal and gusto 
with which his friend entered into the character 
of Bobadil ; how for some weeks he actually 
became Bobadil, talking him and writing him on 
every opportunity. What more natural than 
his enjoyment of the sterling old writer whose 
strength lay in the exhibition of extravagant 
humours ! Dickens had no such life about him 
as the Elizabethan ; in comparison, his world 
was starved and squalid ; but of the humours 
of the men he knew — humours precisely in 
Jonson's sense — he made richer use than any- 



40 CHARLES DICKENS 

thing in that kind known to English Literature 
since the golden age. All Dickens might be 
summed in the title of Jonson's play ; no fig- 
ure but is representative of a " humour," run- 
ning at times into excesses hardly surpassed by 
Ben himself. On several occasions (1845-50) 
he acted in this comedy, and one can hardly 
doubt that it helped to confirm his tendency 
to exuberance of grotesque characterization. 

So much, then, for that part of his self- 
education which came from books. Mean- 
while life had been supplying him with 
abundant experience, which no one knew 
better than Dickens how to store and utilize. 
Theophile Gautier, an observer of a very dif- 
ferent type, says somewhere of himself: " Toute 
ma valeuVy cest que je suis un homme pour qui le 
monde visible existe ; " in Dickens this was far 
from the sole, or the supreme, quality ; but as- 
suredly few men have known so well how to 
use their eyes. A student is commonly inob- 
servant of outward things ; Dickens, far from 
a bookish youth, looked about him in those 
years of struggle for a livelihood with a glance 
which missed no minutest feature of what he 
saw. We are told that his eyes were very 
bright, impressing all who met him with a 
sense of their keenness. Keen they were in 
no ordinary sense ; for they pierced beneath 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 41 

the surface, and (in Lamb's phrase) discerned 
the quiddity of common objects. Everything 
he looked upon was registered in his mind, 
where at any moment he could revive the 
original impression, and with his command 
of words, vital, picturesque, show the thing 
to others. 

His work as attorney's clerk lasted for not 
quite two years (1827-28) ; his reportership in 
the courts of Doctors'-Commons seems to have 
been of even shorter duration ; but in this time 
he probably acquired most of his knowledge 
of the legal world, which was shown first of all 
in Pickwick^ and continued to appear, in one 
form or another, throughout his books. For 
exactitude of observation, this group of pro- 
fessional figures, from office-boy up to judge, 
is the most valuable thing in Dickens. It 
strikes one as noteworthy, on the other hand, 
that he never cared to use his experience of 
journalism. Practically, he once attempted to 
resume his connection with the press, and be- 
came editor of The Daily News — for not quite 
three weeks (1846) ; but the novels (unless we 
take account of the caricatures in Pickwick) 
have no concern with that side of literary life. 
Within limits the picture is supplied by Thack- 
eray. But Dickens might have put to won- 
derful service his memories of the time when 



42 CHARLES DICKENS 

he reported for the True Sun, the Mirror of Par- 
liament, and the Morning Chronicle (1831-36). 
He told the story, long afterwards, in one of 
the best and brightest of his speeches, that 
given at the dinner of the Newspaper Press 
Fund in 1865 ; when, speaking to a generation 
which travelled by steam, he recalled how he 
had been upset in almost every description of 
vehicle known in this country, and had carried 
reports to his editor in the teeth of difficulties 
insuperable by any man of merely common 
energy and resource. What use he made of 
his experiences in travel by highway and by- 
way, we know well, for these are among his 
characteristic pages. Never is Dickens more 
joyously himself than when he tells of stage- 
coach and posting-vehicles. He tried his hand 
at a description of the railway, but with no 
such gusto, no such success. His youth be- 
longed to the pre-locomotive time, the time 
of jolly faring on English roads — jolly in 
spite of frost and rain, and discomforts innu- 
merable. All this he has made his own, and 
he learned it as a newspaper reporter. 

For the acquiring of knowledge of his own 
country he could hardly have been better 
placed. Hither and thither he sped, north and 
south, east and west, to report the weighty 
words of orators now long forgotten. He saw 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 43 

most English towns ; he marked with pleasure 
the hamlets and villages ; of inns, great and 
small, he learnt all that man is capable of learn- 
ing. And in that old England, there was more 
of the picturesque, more of the beautiful, than 
we see to-day. I have insisted upon the ugli- 
ness of the life of that time ; indeed, it can 
hardly be exaggerated; but there is another 
aspect of Dickens's England, one which might 
be illustrated with ample detail from all his 
better books. Side by side with the increase 
of comfort (or of luxury), with that lightening 
of dark places which is surely good, goes on 
the destruction of so much one would fain pre- 
serve. Think, for instance, of Yarmouth, as 
seen in David Copperfield^ and the Yarmouth 
of this year's railway advertisements. What 
more need be said ? 

Not only, then, in London, but through 
the length and breadth of the land, Dickens 
was seeing and studying his countrymen. 
Nothing that he learnt embittered him, any 
more than had his own hardships in the years 
happily gone by ; but he noted many a form of 
suffering, with the tyranny, great or small, the 
hypocrisy and the thickheadedness which were 
responsible for it ; and when his time came, he 
knew how to commend these things to the 



44 CHARLES DICKENS 

sympathy, the indignation, the mirth of larger 
audiences than any author had yet controlled. 
Overflowing with the enjoyment of life, he 
naturally found more sunshine than gloom, 
whether in crowded streets, or by the wayside 
with its scattered wanderers. Now, as always, 
he delighted in the amusements of the people, 
in fairs and shows, and every sort of humble 
entertainment. A conjurer, a fortune-teller, a 
shabby acrobat, a cheap Jack — one and all 
were irresistible to him ; he could not pass a 
menagerie, a circus, a strolling troop of players ; 
the squeak of Punch had as much charm for 
him as for any child. Merely to mention such 
folk is to call up a host of reminiscences from 
the books which bear his name. He had not 
the vagabond nature which we see, for instance, 
in George Borrow ; he is a man of the town, 
of civilization ; but the forms of vagabondage 
which arise amid a great population, quaint 
survivals, ragged eccentricities, laughter-mov- 
ing incarnations of rascality and humbug, ex- 
cited his unfailing interest. He lived to take 
his place in a society of wealth, culture, and 
refinement, but his heart was always with the 
people, with the humble-minded and those of 
low estate. Among these he had found the 
material for his genius to work upon, and, 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 45 

most important of all, among these he learnt 
to make himself the perfect mouthpiece of 
English homeliness. 

In Oliver Twist we eome upon a casual men- 
tion, quite serious, of "continental frivolities." 
The phrase is delightfully English, and very 
characteristic of Dickens's mind when he 
began to write. Ten years later he would 
not have used it; he outgrew that narrow- 
ness ; but it was well that he knew no better 
at five-and-tvventy. Insularity in his growing 
time was needful to him, and must be counted 
for a virtue. 

A year before Queen Victoria's accession 
appeared, in two volumes. Sketches by BoZy 
Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday 
People y a collection of papers which had al- 
ready seen the^ light in periodicals. This 
book came from a 'prentice hand, but it con- 
tains in germ all the future Dickens. Glance 
at the headings of the pages ; here we have the 
Beadle and all connected with him, London 
streets, theatres, shows, the pawnshop, Doc- 
tors'-Commons, Christmas, Newgate, coaching, 
the River ; here we have a satirical picture of 
Parliament, fun made of cheap snobbery, a rap 
on the knuckles of sectarianism. Hardly a 
topic associated with Dickens in his maturity 
is missing from the earliest attempts. What 



46 CHARLES DICKENS 

could be more prophetic than the title of the 
opening chapters — Our Parish ? With the 
Parish — a large one, indeed — Dickens to 
the end concerned himself; therein lay his 
force, his secret of vitality. He began with a 
rapid survey of his whole field; hinting at all 
he might accomplish, indicating the limits he 
was not to pass. 

He treats at once of the lower middle class, 
where he will be always at his best ; with the 
class below it, with those who literally earn 
bread in the sweat of their brows, he was bet- 
ter acquainted than any other novelist of his 
time, but they figure much less prominently in 
his books. To the lower middle class, a social 
status so peculiarly English, so rich in virtues 
yet so provocative of satire, he by origin be- 
longed; in its atmosphere he always breathed 
most freely, and had the largest command of 
his humorous resources. Humour is a char- 
acteristic of Boz, but humour undeveloped, 
tentative; merely a far-off promise of the fruit 
which ripened so rapidly. There is joking 
about the results of matrimony, a primitive 
form of facetiousness which belongs to the 
time and the class, and which it took Dickens 
a good many years to shake off. Vulgarity 
was, of course, inseparable from his subject, 
and that the young author should have been 



GROWTH OF MAN AND WRITER 47 

himself involved in the charge is easily under- 
stood. A vulgar expression may be here and 
there discovered (I mean, of course, in the 
author's own words), but the tone of the 
whole work is as far from vulgarity as that 
of the eighteenth-century sketches and medita- 
tions of which we are occasionally reminded. 
As for the form, it strikes one as more original 
than that of the subsequent books. No one, 
indeed, had ever made such use as this of mate- 
rials taken from the very dust-heap of decent 
London Hfe; such common paltry stuff of the 
town, yet here so truthfully described, with 
such intimate touches, such glimpses of mirth- 
ful motive, as come only from the hand of the 
born artist. Veracity I take to be the high 
merit of these sketches. Dickens has not yet 
developed his liking for the grotesque, the ex- 
travagant ; he pictures the commonplace, with 
no striving for effect, and admirably succeeds. 
Some of these descriptions of the town in its 
various aspects, day and night, he never sur- 
passed ; they abound in detail, yet never by 
any chance admit a false note. His persons 
live and move ; you may encounter nearly all 
of them to-day, affected by the course of time, 
but still recognizable from his fine portraiture. 
It was no slight achievement for a youth of 
four-and-twenty, this putting on record once 



48 CHARLES DICKENS 

for all of so large and significant a portion of 
English life. 

Therewith ended Dickens's apprenticeship. 
He had stored his material, was on the point 
of attaining full command of his powers. 
When next he sat down to write he produced 
a masterpiece. 



CHAPTER III 

THE STORY-TELLER 

A GLANCE over the literary annals of the time 
during which Dickens was apprentice to his 
craft shows us, in fiction, the names of Disraeli, 
Peacock, Mrs. Norton, Bulwer, Ainsworth, 
and Marryat. One and all signify little to the 
coming master, though he professed a high 
esteem for the romances of Lord Lytton, and 
with Captain Marryat shared the tradition of 
the eighteenth-century novelists. Tennyson 
had already corne forth; Browning had printed 
a poem ; Sartor Resartiis had " got itself pub- 
lished," and was waiting for readers. In an- 
other sphere. Tracts for the Times were making 
commotion ; regarding which matter the young 
student of life doubtless had already his opin- 
ion. It is of more interest to note that in 
1832 were established Chaynbers Journal and 
Knight's Penny Magazine; indicative of the 
growth of a new public, a class of readers 
which no author had hitherto directly addressed, 
and which was only to be reached by publication 



50 CHARLES DICKENS 

in the cheapest form. From the preface to 
Oliver Twist we learn that romances of high- 
waymen had much vogue, of course among 
the populace, and about this time Ainsworth 
responded to the demand with his Jack Shep- 
pard. Against this prevalent glorification of 
rascality Dickens directed his first novel, prop- 
erly so called. 

Pickwick cannot be classed as a novel ; it is 
merely a great book. Everyone knows that 
it originated in the suggestion of a publisher 
that the author of Sketches by Box should 
write certain facetious chapters to accompany 
certain facetious drawings ; it was to be a joke 
at the expense of Cockney sportsmen. Dick- 
ens obtained permission to write in his own 
way. Of the original suggestion there remains 
Mr. Winkle with the gun ; for the rest, this 
bit of hackwork became a good deal more than 
the writer himself foresaw. Obviously he sat 
down with only the vaguest scheme ; even the 
personality of his central figure was not clear 
to him. A pardonable fault, when the circum- 
stances are known, but the same defect appears 
in all Dickens's earlier books ; he only suc- 
ceeded in correcting it when his imaginative 
fervour had begun to cool, and in the end he 
sought by the artifices of an elaborate plot to 
make up for the decline of qualities greatly 



THE STORY-TELLER 



SI 



more important. In considering Dickens as 
an artist, I propose first of all to deal with the 
construction of his stories. Let it be under- 
stood that in the present chapters I discuss his 
novels solely from this point of view, post- 
poning consideration of those features of the 
master's work which are his strength and his 
glory. 

However ill-constructed, Pickwick^ I imagine, 
was never found uninteresting. One may dis- 
course about it in good set terms, pointing out 
that it belongs to a very old school of narrative, 
and indicating resemblances with no less a 
work than Don ^ixote^ — Mr. Pickwick and 
Sam Weller being in some degree the antitypes 
of the Knight of La Mancha and Sancho. In- 
trigue there is none (save in the offices of 
Messrs. Dodsoa and Fogg). The thing is 
aimed at the reader's diaphragm, and, by ri- 
cochet, touches his heart. Lord Campbell 
declared that he would rather have written 
Pickwick than be Chief Justice of England; 
yet here we have simply the rambles and 
accidents and undignified escapades of certain 
Londoners, one of them accompanied by a man- 
servant, whom he picked up as boots at an inn ; 
we have a typical London landlady, a breach- 
of-promise case, and a debtors' prison. What 
unpromising material, in the year 1837, for 



52 CHARLES DICKENS 

any author but the one who knew how to 
make immortal use of it ! 

As in the Sketches we found the germ of all 
Dickens, so in this second book, not yet a 
novel, may we mark tendencies soon to have 
full development. The theme itself admitting 
no great variety of tone, we have the time- 
honoured device of episodic stories ; one of 
them shows that melodramatic bent which was to 
be of such importance in future books ; another, 
the tale of Gabriel Grub, gives, thus early, a 
hint of the Christmas fantasies which so greatly 
strengthened their author's hold on the popu- 
lar admiration and love. The close gives us 
our first example of Dickens's resolute opti- 
mism. Everybody (or all but everybody) is to 
be made happy for ever after ; knavish hearts 
are softened by gratitude, and those of the 
good beat high in satisfied benevolence. This 
is the kind of thing that delights the public, 
and lucky would be the public if it were often 
ofi-'ered to them with a noble sincerity like that 
of Dickens. 

With Oliver Twist we take up the tradition 
of English novel-writing ; at once we are re- 
minded of the old books in the library at 
Rochester. Scenes and people and tone are 
new, but the manner is that long ago estab- 
lished. As for construction, there is a little. 



THE STORY-TELLER S3 

and a very little, more of it than in Pickwick ; 
it is badly managed, so badly, that one seeks to 
explain the defect by remembering that the 
early part of Oliver and the last part of Pick- 
wick were in hand simultaneously. Yet not in 
this book alone did Dickens give proof of 
an astonishing lack of skill when it came to 
inventing plausible circumstances. Later, by 
sheer force of resolve, he exhibited ingenuity 
enough, often too much for his purpose ; but 
the art of adapting simple probabilities to the 
ends of a narrative he never mastered. In his 
plots, unfortunately, he is seldom concerned 
with the plain motives of human life. (Observe 
that I am speaking of his plots.) Too often 
he prefers some far-fetched eccentricity, some 
piece of knavishness, some unlikely occurrence, 
about which to weave his tale. And this, it 
seems to me, is directly traceable to his fond- 
ness for the theatre. He planned a narrative 
as though plotting for the stage. When the 
necessities of intrigue did not weigh upon him 
— as happily was so often the cause in his 
roomy stories — he could forget the footlights ; 
at the first demand for an " effect," gas and 
limelight are both turned on. Cannot we 
often hear the incidental music ? Dickens's 
love for the stage was assuredly a misfortune 
to him, as author and as man. 



54 CHARLES DICKENS 

In the idle mysteries which are made to sur- 
round Oliver, and in the incredible weakness 
of what is meant to be the darkest part of the 
story, we have pure stage-work. Chapter 
xvii. contains a passage ridiculing the melo- 
drama of the time, a tissue of mediaeval villa- 
nies ; what Dickens himself did, in these worst 
moments of his invention, was to use the 
motives of standard melodrama on a contem- 
porary subject. Even the dialogue occasionally 
proves this. " Wolves tear your throats ! ' 
growls Bill Sikes, fleeing from his pursuers — 
a strange exclamation for a London burglar. 
And again, when brought to bay after the mur- 
der he calls one of the horrified thieves " this 
screeching Hell-babe" — phrase natural enough 
on the boards of the Adelphi Theatre, but in- 
congruous in a London slum. That part of 
the book in which Rose Maylie and her lover 
appear smacks rather of the circulating library 
than of the stage. We read of Rose in distress 
that " a heavy wildness came over her soft blue 
eyes." I cannot remember that Dickens was 
ever again guilty of lapses such as these ; but 
the theatric vice appears in his construction to 
the end. 

In the years 1838 and 1839 ^^ ^^^ ^^^ ^^^ 
much. Nicholas Nickleby was begun long 
before the end of Oliver Twisty as Oliver was 



THE STORY-TELLER ^^ 

begun before the end of Pickwick. Ill-con- 
sidered engagements so pressed upon him 
that in February, 1839, we find him appealing 
to his publisher for patience, and expressing an 
opinion that " the conduct of three different 
stories at the same time, and the production of 
a large portion of each every month, would 
have been beyond Scott himself" It came as 
a natural result of his sudden and great success. 
Finally, he put himself at ease by a simple re- 
fusal to be bound by his undertakings ; an 
extreme step, but one which has to be balanced 
against the interested calculations of a shrewd 
publisher. 

It is plain that Nickleby suffered from these 
circumstances of undue stress ; in spite of its 
popularity, and of merits presently to be recog- 
nized, it is the least satisfactory of the group 
of books written before Dickens's first visit 
to America. Five books in five years, from 
Pickwick in 1837 to Barnahy Rudge in 1841 — 
a record nothing like that of Scott, but wonder- 
ful as the work of a man with only half Scott's 
length of experience to draw upon. Nickleby 
being much longer than its predecessor, the 
faulty construction is more felt, and becomes a 
weariness, an irritation ; that is to say, if one 
thinks of the matter at all, which one never 
should in reading Dickens. Again we are in- 



S6 CHARLES DICKENS 

volved in melodrama of the feeblest description ; 
towards the end of the story there are wastes 
of stagey dialogue and action, unreadable by 
any but the very young. All this is quite un- 
v^orthy of the author, but, following upon 
Oliver, it indicated the limits of his power as 
a novelist. Dickens never had command of 
" situation," though he was strong in incident. 
A great situation must be led up to by careful 
and skilful foresight in character and event — 
precisely where his resources always failed him. 
Thus, scenes which he intended, and perhaps 
thought, to be very effective fall flat through 
their lack of substance. A mature reader turns 
away in disgust, and, if he belong to a hasty 
school of modern criticism, henceforth declares 
that Dickens is hopelessly antiquated, and was 
always vastly overpraised. 

Here, for the last time, we have episodic 
stories ; admissible enough in a book which, 
for all its faults, smacks so of the leisurely old 
fiction. In The Old Curiosity Shop, which came 
next, there is more originality of design : one 
does not smell the footlights, but has, instead, 
delicious wafts of freshness from the fields and 
lanes of England. Of course we find an initial 
vice of construction, inseparable from Dickens's 
habit at that time of beginning to write without 
any settled scheme. Master Humphrey opens 



THE STORY-TELLER 



57 



with talk of himself, enters upon a relation of 
something that befell him in his wanderings, 
and of a sudden — the author perceiving this 
necessity — vanishes from the scene, which is 
thenceforth occupied by the figures he has 
served to introduce. In other words, readers 
of the periodical called Master Humphrey' s 
Clock having shown some impatience with its 
desultory character, Dickens converted into a 
formal novel the bit of writing which he had 
begun as sketch or gossip. Nowadays it 
would be all but impossible for a writer of fic- 
tion, who by any accident should have written 
and published serially a work with such a fault 
of design, to republish it in a volume without 
correcting the faulty part ; a very slight degree 
of literary conscientiousness, as we understand 
it, would impose this duty ; nay, fear of the 
public would exact it. But such a thing never 
occurred to Dickens. Conscientious he was in 
matters of his art, as we shall have occasion to 
notice, but the art itself was less exacting in his 
day; a multitude applauded, and why should he 
meddle with what they had so loudly approved ? 
In the same way we find Walter Scott coming 
one fine day upon an old manuscript of his own 
— two or three chapters of a romance long ago 
begun and thrown aside. He reads the pages, 
smiles over them, and sits down to complete 



58 CHARLES DICKENS 

the story. In reading the proofs of IV aver ley, 
if not before, he must have been well aware 
of the great gap between its two portions, of 
the difference of style, the contrast of tone : the 
early chapters so obviously an experiment, the 
latter mature and masterly. It would have 
taken him a very few hours to rewrite the be- 
ginning ; but why ? The whole thing was 
done for his amusement. The public, in its 
turn, was something more than amused. And 
our grave Art of Fiction, a bitter task-mistress, 
had nothing to do with the matter. 

For the rest. The Old Curiosity Shop is greatly 
superior from this point of view to the previous 
novels. The story has more of symmetry; it 
moves more regularly to its close, and that 
close is much more satisfying ; it remains in 
one's mind as a whole, with no part that one 
feels obtrusive or incongruous or wearily feeble. 
In writing the last portion, Dickens was so 
engrossed by his theme that he worked at 
unusual hours, prolonging the day's labour 
into the night — never of course a habit with a 
man of his social instincts. The book gained 
thereby its unity of effect. It is a story in the 
true sense, and one of the most delightful in 
our language. 

Last of this early group — product of one 
continuous effort through five of the happiest 



THE STORY-TELLER 



59 



years that man ever lived — comes Barnaby 
RudgBy which is in part a romance of private 
life, in part a historical novel. The two parts 
are not well knit together ; the interest with 
which we begin is lost in far wider interests 
before we end; nevertheless Barnaby is free 
from Dickens's worst vices of construction. 
Granting the imperfection of the scheme, it is 
closely wrought and its details not ill-contrived. 
One defect forced upon our attention is char- 
acteristic of Dickens : his inability to make 
skilful revelation of circumstances which, for 
the purpose of the story, he has kept long con- 
cealed. This skill never came to him ; with 
apology for so disrespectful a word, he must 
be held to have bungled all his effects of this 
kind, and there can be no doubt that the 
revealing of the mystery of Edwin Drood 
would have betrayed the old inability. Permit 
Dickens to show us the life he knew in its 
simple everyday course and he is unsurpassed 
by any master of fiction ; demand from him a 
contrived story and he yields at once to the 
very rank and file of novelists. 

A peculiarity of this book is the frequent 
opening of a chapter with several lines of old- 
fashioned moralizing, generally on the moral 
compensations of life. Later, Dickens found a 
happy substitute for this kind of thing in his 



6o CHARLES DICKENS 

peculiar vein of good-humoured satire, which 
had a more practical if a narrower scope. 

The year 1842 was a turning-point in his 
career. He paid his first visit to America, and 
came back with his ideas enlarged on many- 
subjects. After publishing American NoteSy 
and the first of his Christmas books, the Caroly 
he completed, in 1 844, what is in some respects 
the greatest of his works, Martin Chuzzlewit, 
The fact that such a judgment is possible shows 
how little the characteristic merit of Dickens's 
writings has to do with their completeness as 
works of art ; for a novel more shapeless, a story 
less coherent than Martin Chuzzlewit will not 
easily be found in any literature. Repeated 
readings avail not to fiyi it in one's mind as a 
sequence of events ; we know the persons, we 
remember many a scene, but beyond that all is 
a vague reminiscence. I repeat, that one can 
only feel astonishment at the inability of such a 
man as Dickens to scheme better than this. 
Had he but trusted to some lucid story, how- 
ever slight ! Misled by the footlights he aims 
at a series of " effects," every one void of hu- 
man interest, or, at best, an outrage to proba- 
bility. He involves himself in complications 
which necessitate leaps and bounds of perverse 
ingenuity. And at last, his story frankly hope- 
Jess, h^ cuts through knots, throws difficulties 



THE STORY-TELLER 6i 

into oblivion, and plays up his characters to 
a final rally ; so sure of his touch upon the 
readers* emotions that he can disregard their 
bewilderment. The first chapter, a very dull, 
long-drawn piece of ridicule directed against 
the supposed advantages of " birth," has noth- 
ing whatever to do with the story ; the book 
would gain by its omission. Dickens in a 
splenetic mood (a rare thing) is far from at his 
best. Chuzzlewit surpasses all his novels in 
the theatrical conventionality of its great clos- 
ing scene — its grand finale (see chapter Hi.). 
Around old Martin (at the centre of the stage) 
are grouped all the dramatis personae, whether 
they have any business there or not ; Mrs. 
Gamp, Poll Sweedlepipes, and young Bailey 
coming in without rhyme or reason, simply to 
complete the circle. It is magnificent; the 
brilliant triumph of stage tradition. But it 
does not suffice ; something more is needed 
that the reader's appetite for a cheerful ending 
may have entire satisfaction ; therefore, before 
the book closes, who should turn up in the 
heart of London but that very family of miser- 
able emigrants whom Martin and Tapley had 
left behind them in the wild west of America ! 
Here they are, at the foot of the Monument, 
close by Todgers' — arrived on purpose to 
shake hands with everyone, and to fill the 



62 CHARLES DICKENS 

cup of benevolent rejoicing. What man save 
Dickens ever dared so much ; what man will 
ever find the courage to strike that note 
again ? 

It is necessary to bear in mind that these 
novels appeared in monthly parts — twenty of 
them — and that the author began publishing 
with only three or four parts completed. Such 
a mode of writing accounts for many things. 
Dickens admitted certain disadvantages, but 
held to the end that this was still the best way 
of pursuing his art. Of course the novel be- 
came an improvisation. In beginning Chuz- 
zlewity he had no intention whatever of sending 
his hero to America; the resolve was taken, 
suddenly, when a declining sale proved that 
the monthly instalments were not proving so 
attractive as usual. Impossible ever to make 
changes in the early chapters of a story, how- 
ever urgently the artist's conscience demanded 
it; impossible, in Dickens's case, to see men- 
tally as a whole the work on which he was 
engaged. What he had written, he had written ; 
it had to serve its purpose. One can only 
lament that such were the defects of his 
inimitable qualities. 

The next great book was not finished till 
1 848 ; meanwhile there had been travel and 
residence on the Continent; a bright chapter 



THE STORY-TELLER 63 

in Dickens's life, but without noteworthy influ- 
ence on his work. His Italian sketches are 
characteristic of the man ; one cannot say more. 
Among the Alps he wrote Bombey and Son, not 
without trouble due to the unfamiliar surround- 
ings. " You can hardly imagine," he declares 
to Forster, " what infinite pains I take, or what 
extraordinary difficulty I find in getting on 
fast. ... I suppose this is partly the effect 
of two years' ease, and partly of the absence of 
the streets and numbers of figures. I can't 
express how much I want these. It seems as 
if they supplied something to my brain, which 
I cannot bear, when busy, to lose." In truth, 
away from London, he was cut off from the 
source of his inspiration ; but he had a memory 
stored with London pictures. He tells us, and 
we can well believe him, that, whilst writing, 
he saw every bed in the dormitory of Paul's 
school, every pew in the church where Flor- 
ence was married. In which connection it is 
worth mentioning that not till the year 1855 
did Dickens keep any sort of literary memo- 
randum book. After all his best work was 
done, he felt misgivings which prompted him 
to make notes. A French or English realist, 
with his library of documents, may muse 
over this fact — and deduce from it what he 
pleases. 



64 CHARLES DICKENS 

Domhey is the first of the novels which have 
a distinct moral theme ; its subject is Pride. 
Here there is no doubt that Dickens laid down 
the broad outlines of his story in advance, and 
adhered to them ; we feel that the book is built 
up with great pains, with infinite endeavour to 
make a unity. The advance is undeniable (of 
course we have lost something, for all that), 
but one cannot help noticing that with the 
death of Paul ends a novel which is complete 
in itself, a novel more effective, I think, than 
results from the prolonged work. Dickens 
tells, in letters, of the effort it cost him to 
transfer immediately all the interest of his story 
from the dead boy to his sister Florence ; the 
necessity for it was unfortunate. As usual, we 
have loud melodrama side by side with comedy 
unsurpassed for its delicate touches of truth 
and fancy. The girl Alice and her disreputa- 
ble mother, pendants to Edith Dombey and 
Mrs. Skewton, are in mid-limelight ; perhaps 
Dickens never so boldly defied the modesty 
of nature as here, both in character and situa- 
tion. An instance of far-fetched and cum- 
brous contrivance with gross improbability 
added to it, is Mr. Dombey's discovery of the 
place to which his wife has fled. Nothing 
easier than to bring about the same end by 
simple and probable means ; but Dickens had 



THE STORY-TELLER 6s 

an "effect" in view — of the kind that so 
strangely satisfied him. His melodrama serves 
an end which is new in Dombey, though after- 
wards of frequent occurrence ; that of bringing 
together, in strangely intimate relations, figures 
representing social extremes. Dickens came 
to delight in this. His best use of the motive 
is in Bleak House; and a striking instance 
occurs in the last pages he ever wrote. 

It was whilst telling the story of little Paul, 
a victim of excessive parental care, that, per- 
haps by force of contrast, the novelist looked 
back upon his own childhood, and thought 
of turning it to literary use. We learn from 
Forster (Book L 2) that in the year 1847 
was written a chapter of reminiscences which 
Dickens at first intended to be the beginning 
of an autobiography. Wisely, no doubt, he 
soon abandoned this idea ; but the memory of 
his own sad childhood would not be dismissed, 
and it made the groundwork of his next novel 
(1850), Bavid Copperjield, Dickens held this 
to be his best book, and the world has agreed 
with him. In no other does the narrative 
move on with such full sail from first to last. 
He wrote from his heart; picturing completely 
all he had suflFered as a child, and even touch- 
ing upon the domestic trouble of his later life. 
It is difficult to speak of Bavid Copperfield in 

5 



66 CHARLES DICKENS 

terms of cool criticism^ but for the moment I 
am concerned only with its form, and must 
put aside the allurement of its matter. Once 
more, then, combined with lavish wealth of 
description, character, pathos, humour, we meet 
with poverty of invention, abuse of drama. All 
the story of Emily (after her childhood) is 
unhappily conceived. (Of course this part of 
the book was at once dramatized and acted.) 
Such a subject lay wholly beyond Dickens's 
scope, and could not be treated by him in any 
but an unsatisfactory way. The mysteries 
surrounding Mr. Wickham, the knaveries of 
Uriah Heep, have no claim upon our belief; 
intrigue half-heartedly introduced merely be- 
cause intrigue seems necessary ; even Mr. 
Micawber, in all his robust reality, has to 
walk among these airy figments, and play his 
theatrical part. In the scene between Ernily 
and Rosa Dartle (chapter 1.) the orchestra 
plays very loudly indeed ; every word has its 
accompanying squeak or tremolo. But enough ; 
one has not the heart to dwell upon the short- 
comings of such a book. 

It may be noted, however, with what frank- 
ness Dickens accepts the conventionality of a 
story told in the first person. David re- 
lates in detail conversations which take place 
before he is born, and makes no apology for 



THE STORY-TELLER 67 

doing so. Why should he ? The point never 
occurs to the engrossed reader. In Bleak 
House^ where the same expedient is used (in 
part), such boldness is not shown, though the 
convention still demands abundant sacrifice of 
probability in another way. Finally, in Great 
Expectations^ we have a narrative in the first 
person, which, granting to the narrator noth- 
ing less than Dickens's own equipment of 
genius, preserves verisimilitude with remark- 
able care, nothing being related, as seen or 
heard, which could not have been seen or 
heard by the writer. This instance serves to 
show that Dickens did become conscious of 
artistic faults, and set himself to correct them. 
But, in the meantime, he had touched the 
culmination of his imaginative life, and a slight 
improvement in technical correctness could not 
compensate the World's loss when his charac- 
teristic strength began to fail and his natural 
force to be abated. 

Bleak House (1853) is constructed only too 
well. Here Dickens applied himself labori- 
ously to the perfecting of that kind of story 
he had always had in view, and produced a 
fine example of theatrical plot. One cannot 
say, in this case, that the intrigue refuses to be 
remembered ; it is a puzzle, yet ingeniously 
simple ; the parts fitting together very neatly 



68 CHARLES DICKENS 

indeed. So neatly, that poor untidy Life 
disclaims all connection with these doings, 
however willingly she may recognize for her 
children a score or so of the actors. To be 
sure there are oversights. How could Dickens 
expect one to believe that Lady Dedlock recog- 
nized her lover's handwriting in a piece of work 
done by him as law-writer — she not even 
knowing that he was so employed ? What 
fate pursued him that he could not, in all the 
resources of his brain, hit upon a device for 
such a simple end more convincing than this ? 
Still, with an aim not worth pursuing, the 
author here wrought successfully. The story 
is child's play compared with many invented, 
for instance, by Wilkie Collins ; but in combi- 
nation with Dickens's genuine powers, it pro- 
duces its designed effect ; we move in a world 
of choking fog and squalid pitfalls, amid plot 
and counterplot, cold self-interest and passion 
over-wrought, and can never refuse attention 
to the magician who shows it all. 

I have left it to this place to speak of the 
sin, most gross, most palpable, which Dickens 
everywhere commits in his abuse of " coinci- 
dence." Bleak House is the supreme example 
of his recklessness. It seems never to have 
occurred to him, thus far in his career, that 
novels and fairy tales (or his favourite 



THE STORY-TELLER 69 

Arabian Nights) should obey different laws 
in the matter of incident. When Oliver Twist 
casually makes acquaintance with an old gen- 
tleman in the streets of London, this old gen- 
tleman of course turns out to be his relative, 
who desired of all things to discover the boy. 
When Steerforth returns to England from 
his travels with Emily, his ship is of course 
wrecked on the sands of Yarmouth, and his 
dead body washed up at the feet of David 
Copperfield, who happened to have made a 
little journey to see his Yarmouth friends on 
that very day. In Bleak House scarcely a page 
but presents some coincidence as glaring as 
these. Therein lies the worthlessness of the 
plot, which is held together only by the use 
of coincidence in its most flagrant forms. Grant 
that anything may happen just where or when 
the interest of the story demands it, and a 
neat drama may pretty easily be constructed. 
The very boldness of the thing prevents 
readers from considering it ; indeed most 
readers take the author's own view, and im- 
agine every artificiality to be permitted in the 
world of fiction. 

Dickens was content to have aroused in- 
terest, wonder, and many other emotions. 
The conception is striking ; the atmosphere 
could hardly be better ; even the melodrama 



70 CHARLES DICKENS 

(as in Krook's death by spontaneous combus- 
tion) justifies itself by magnificent workman- 
ship. No doubt the generality of readers are 
wise, and it is pedantry to object to the logical 
extremes of convention in an art which, with- 
out convention, would not exist. 

One wishes that Esther Summerson had not 
been allowed to write in her own person — or 
rather to assume, with such remarkable success, 
the personality of Charles Dickens. This 
well-meaning young woman, so blind to her 
own merits, of course had no idea that she was 
a great humourist and a writer of marvellous 
narrative ; but readers (again the reflective 
few) are only too much impressed by her 
powers. Again one closes his eyes, and suf- 
fers a glad illusion. But for the occasional 
" I " one may easily enough forget that Miss 
Summerson is speaking. 

I must pass rapidly over the novels that 
remai n . Of Little Dorr it (1855), as of Martin 
Chuzzlewit, who can pretend to bear the story 
in mind ? There is again a moral theme ; the 
evils of greed and vulgar ambition. As a 
rule, we find this book dismissed rather con- 
temptuously ; it is held to be tedious, and un- 
like Dickens in its prevalent air of gloom. 
For all that, I believe it to contain some of 
his finest work, some passages in which he 



THE STORY-TELLER 71 

attains an artistic finish hardly found else- 
where ; and to these I shall return. There 
were reasons why the book should be lacking 
in the old vivacity — never indeed to be re- 
covered, in so far as it had belonged to the 
golden years of youth ; it was written in a 
time of domestic unhappiness and of much 
unsettlement, the natural result of which ap- 
peared three years later, when Dickens left the 
study for the platform. As a narrative. Little 
Dorr it is far from successful ; it is cumbered 
with mysteries which prove futile, and has no 
proportion in its contrasting parts. Here 
and there the hand of the master is plainly 
weary. 

More so, however, in the only other full- 
length novel which he lived to complete. 
None of his books is so open to the charge 
of tedious superfluity as Our Mutual Friend 
(1865); on many a page dialogue which is 
strictly no dialogue at all, but mere verbosity 
in a vein of forced humour, drags its slow 
length along in caricature of the author at his 
best. A plot, depending on all manner of fan- 
tastic circumstances, unfolds itself with dreary 
elaboration, and surely gratifies no one. Yet I 
have a sense of ingratitude in speaking thus 
of Our Mutual Friend ; for in it Dickens went 
far towards breaking with his worst theatrical 



72 CHARLES DICKENS 

traditions, and nowhere, I think, irritates one 
with a violent improbability in the manage- 
ment of his occurrences. The multiplication 
of wills, as Dickens insisted in reply to criti- 
cism, need not trouble anyone who reads the 
newspapers ; at worst it lacks interest. With 
anything, however, but gratification, one notes 
that the author is adapting himself to a new 
time, new people, new manners. Far behind 
us are the stage-coach and the brandy-drink- 
ers ; the age, if more respectable, has become 
decidedly duller. Even so with Dickens ; he 
feels the constraint of a day to which he was 
not born, and whilst bending himself to its de- 
mands, succeeds only in making us regret the 
times gone by. 

For new schools of fiction have meanwhile 
arisen in England. Charlotte Bronte has sent 
forth her three books ; Kingsley is writing, 
and Charles Reade, and Anthony Trollope; 
George Meredith, and, later, George Eliot, 
have begun their careers. We are in the time 
of the " Origin of Species." A veteran in 
every sense but the literal, Dickens keeps his 
vast popularity, but cannot hope to do more 
than remind his readers (and his hearers) of all 
that he had achieved. 

Of Hard Times ^ I have said nothing ; it is 
practically a forgotten book and little in it 



THE STORY-TELLER 73 

demands attention. Two other short novels 
remain to be mentioned (the Christmas books 
belong to a genre that does not call for criti- 
cism in this place), and one of them, Great 
Expectations (1861), would be nearly perfect in 
its mechanism but for the unhappy deference 
to Lord Lytton's judgment, which caused the 
end to be altered. Dickens meant to have 
left Pip a lonely man, and of course rightly so ; 
by the irony of fate he was induced to spoil his 
work through a brother novelist's desire for a 
happy ending — a strange thing, indeed, to 
befall Dickens. Observe how finely the nar- 
rative is kept in one key. It begins with a 
mournful impression — the foggy marshes 
spreading drearily by the seaward Thames — 
and throughout recurs this effect of cold and 
damp and dreariness ; in that kind Dickens 
never did anything so good. Despite the 
subject, we have no stage fire — except around 
the person of Mr. Wopsle, a charming bit of 
satire, recalling and contrasting with the far- 
off days of Nickleby. The one unsatisfactory 
feature is the part concerned with Miss Havi- 
sham and Estella. Here the old Dickens sur- 
vives in unhappy fashion ; unable to resist 
the lure of eccentricity, but no longer present- 
ing it with the gusto which was wont to be 
more than an excuse. Passing this, one can 



74 CHARLES DICKENS 

hardly overpraise the workmanship. No story 
in the first person was ever better told. 

Of the Tale of Two Cities (1859) i^ is im- 
possible to speak so favourably. Like Barnahy 
Rudge^ a historical novel, it is better constructed 
than that early book, but by no means so alive. 
In his two novels dealing with a past time, Dick- 
ens attacks the two things he most hated in the 
present ; religious fanaticism and social tyranny. 
Barnahy is in all senses a characteristic book. 
The Tale of Two Cities can hardly be called 
so in anything but its theme. The novelist 
here laid a restraint upon himself; he aimed 
deliberately at writing a story for the story's 
sake; the one thing he had never yet been 
able to do. Among other presumed super- 
fluities, humour is dismissed. To some readers 
the result appears admirable ; for my part, I 
feel the restraint throughout, miss the best of 
my author, and, whilst admitting that he has 
produced something like a true tragedy, reflect 
that many another man could have handled 
the theme as well, if not better. It leaves no 
strong impression on my mind ; even the 
figure of Carton soon grows dim against a 
dimmer background. 

In the autumn of 1867, Dickens left Eng- 
land on his second voyage across the Atlantic, 
to give that long series of public readings 



THE STORY-TELLER 75 

which shattered his health and sent him back a 
doomed man. Upon this aspect of his public 
life something will be said in a later chapter. 
The spring of 1868 saw him return, and before 
the end of the year he had entered upon a 
series of farewell readings in his own country. 
Defiant of the gravest physical symptoms, — 
it v/as not in the man*s nature to believe that 
he could be beaten in anything he undertook, 
— he laboured through a self-imposed duty 
which would have tasked him severely even in 
the time of robust health, and finally took 
leave of his audience on the 5th of April, 1870. 
Meanwhile (in a few months of rest to which 
he was constrained by medical advice) he had 
begun the writing of a new book, which was 
to appear in twelve monthly numbers, instead 
of the old heroic ^twenty ; its name. The Mys- 
tery of Edwin Drood. Six numbers only were 
finished. As an indication of the disturbance 
of mental habit caused by the author's life as 
a public entertainer, Forster mentions that 
Dickens miscalculated the length (in print) of 
his first two parts by no less than twelve pages ; 
ominous error in one who had rarely found his 
calculation in this matter wrong even by a line. 
Beyond the sixth part, only a disjointed scene 
was written. He worked in his garden house 
at Gadshill, — the home endeared to him by 



76 CHARLES DICKENS 

Shakespearian associations, — till the evening 
of the 8th of June, and an hour or two later 
was seized by fatal illness. The next day he 
died. 

Edwin Drood would probably have been his 
best constructed book : as far as it goes, the 
story hangs well together, showing a care in 
the contrivance of detail which is more than 
commonly justified by the result. One cannot 
help wishing that Dickens had chosen another 
subject — one in which there was neither mys- 
tery nor murder, both so irresistibly attractive 
to him, yet so far from being the true material 
of his art. Surely it is unfortunate that the 
last work of a great writer should have for its 
theme nothing more human than a trivial 
mystery woven about a vulgar deed of blood. 
For this, it seems to me, his public readings 
may well have been responsible. In the last 
series he had made a great impression by his 
rendering (acting, indeed) of the death of 
Nancy in Oliver Twist. The thing, utterly 
unworthy of him in this shape, had cost him 
great pains ; his imagination was drenched with 
gore, preoccupied with a sordid horror. Cast- 
ing about him for a new story, he saw murder 
at the end of every vista. It would not have 
been thus if he had lived a calmer life, with 
natural development of his thoughts. In that 



THE STORY-TELLER 77 

case we might have had some true successor to 
David Copperfield, His selection of scene was 
happy and promising — the old city of his 
childhood, Rochester. The tone, too, of his 
descriptive passages is much more appropriate 
than the subject. But Dickens had made his 
choice in life, and therefrom inevitably resulted 
his course in literature. 



CHAPTER IV 

ART, VERACITY, AND MORAL PURPOSE 

It is a thankless task to write of such a man as 
Dickens in disparaging phrase. I am impa- 
tient to reach that point of my essay where I 
shall be at liberty to speak with admiration un- 
stinted, to dwell upon the strength of the 
master*s work, and exalt him where he is un- 
surpassed. But it is necessary to clear the 
way. So great a change has come over the 
theory and practice of fiction in the England 
of our times that v/e must needs treat of 
Dickens as, in many respects, antiquated. To 
be antiquated is not necessarily to be con- 
demned, in art or anything else (save weapons of 
slaughter) ; but as the result of the last chapter 
we feel that, in one direction, Dickens suffers 
from a comparison with novelists, his peers, of 
a newer day, even with some who were strictly 
his contemporaries. We have now to ask our- 
selves in what other aspects his work differs 
markedly from the prevalent conception of the 
art of novel-writing. It will be seen, of course, 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 79 

that, theoretically, he had very little in common 
with our school of strict veracity, of realism — 
call it what you please; the school which, quite 
apart from extravagances, has directed fiction 
into a path it is likely to pursue for many 
a year to come. Hard words are spoken of 
him by young writers whose zeal outruns their 
discretion, and far outstrips their knowledge ; 
from the advanced posts of modern criticism 
any stone is good enough to throv/ at a novelist 
who avov/s and glories in his moral purpose ; 
who would on no account bring a blush to the 
middle-class cheek ; who at any moment tampers 
with truth of circumstance that his readers may 
have joy rather than sorrow. Well, we must 
look into this matter, and, as Captain Cuttle 
says, take its bearings. Endeavouring to judge 
Dickens as a man of his time, we must see in 
what spirit he approached his tasks ; what he 
consciously sought to achieve in this pursuit of 
story-telling. One thing, assuredly, can never 
become old-fashioned in any disdainful sense ; 
that is, sincerity of purpose. Novelists of to- 
day desire above everything to be recognized 
as sincere in their picturing of life. If Dickens 
prove to be no less honest, according to his 
lights, we must then glance at the reasons which 
remove him so far from us in his artistic design 
and execution. 



8o CHARLES DICKENS 

Much fault has been found with Forster*s 
Biography y which is generally blamed as giving 
undue prominence to the figure of the biog- 
rapher. I cannot join in this censure; I pre- 
fer to echo the praise of Thomas Carlyle : " So 
long as Dickens is interesting to his fellow-men, 
here will be seen, face to face, what Dickens's 
manner of existing was." Carlyle, I conceive, 
was no bad judge of a biography ; as a worker 
in literature he appreciated this vivid present- 
ment of a fellow-worker. I should say, in- 
deed, that there exists no book more imme- 
diately helpful to a young man beginning his 
struggle in the world of letters (especially, of 
course, to the young novelist) than this of 
Forster's. And simply because it exhibits in 
such rich detail the story, and the manner, of 
Dickens's work ; showing him at his desk day 
by day, recounting his hidden difficulties, his 
secret triumphs; in short, making the man live 
over again before us the noblest portion of his 
life. 

One thing to be learnt from every page of 
the biography is the strenuous spirit in which 
Dickens wrought. Whatever our judgment 
as to the result, his zeal and energy were those 
of the born artist. Passages numberless might 
be quoted from his letters, showing how he 
enjoyed the labour of production, how he 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 8i 

threw himself into the imaginative world with 
which he was occupied, how impossible it was 
for him to put less than all his splendid force 
into the task of the moment. A good instance 
is the following. He writes to tell his friend 
Forster of some private annoyance, which had 
threatened to upset his day's work. " I was 
most horribly put out for a little while ; for I 
had got up early to go to work, and was full 
of interest in what I had to do. But having 
eased my mind by that note to you, and taken 
a turn or two up and down the room, I went 
at it again, and soon got so interested that I 
blazed away till nine last night ; only stopping 
ten minutes for dinner. I suppose I wrote 
eight printed pages of Chuzzlewit yesterday. 
The consequence is that I could finish to-day, 
but am taking it easy, and making myself 
laugh very much " (Forster, Book IV. 2). 
Year after iyear, he keeps his friend minutely 
informed by letter of the progress he makes 
with every book ; consults him on endless 
points, great and small ; is inexhaustible in 
gossip about himself, which never appears 
egoistic because of the artistic earnestness de- 
clared in every syllable. With no whit less 
conscientiousness did he discharge his duties 
as editor of a magazine. We find him writing 
to Forster ; " I have had a story " — accepted 

6 



82 CHARLES DICKENS 

from an Imperfectly qualified contributor — 
" to hack and hew into some form for House- 
hold Words this morning, which has taken me 
four hours of close attention." Four hours of 
Dickens's time, in the year 1856, devoted to 
such a matter as this ! — where any ordinary 
editor, or rather his assistant, would have con- 
tented himself with a few blottings and inser- 
tions, sure that " the great big stupid public," 
as Thackeray called it, would be no better 
pleased, toil how one mJght. To Dickens 
the public was not everything ; he could not 
rest until the deformities of that little bit of 
writing were removed, and no longer offended 
his eye. 

Even so. On the other hand, having it in 
mind to make a certain use of a character in 
Dombey and Son^ he seriously asks Forster : 
" Do you think it may be done^ without mak- 
ing people angry ? " 

Here is the contradiction so irritating to 
Dickens's severer critics, the artistic generation 
of to-day. What ! — they exclaim — a great 
writer, inspired with a thoroughly fine idea, is 
to stay his hand until he has made grave 
inquiry whether Messrs. Mudie's subscribers 
will approve it or not ! The mere suggestion 
is infuriating. And this — they vociferate — 
is what Dickens was always doing. It may be 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 83 

true that he worked like a Trojan, but what is 
the use of work, meant to be artistic, carried 
on in hourly fear of Mrs. Grundy ? Fingers 
are pointed to this, that, and the other Conti- 
nental novelist ; can you imagine him in such 
sorry plight ? Why, nothing would have 
pleased him better than to know he was out- 
raging public sentiment ! In fact, it is only 
when one does so that one*s work has a chance 
of being good. 

All which may be true enough in relation 
to the speakers. As regards Dickens, it is 
irrelevant. Dickens had before him no such 
artistic ideal ; he never desired freedom to 
offend his public. Sympathy with his readers 
was to him the very breath of life ; the more 
complete that sympathy the better did he es- 
teem his work. Of the restrictions laid upon 
him he was perfectly aware, and there is evi- 
dence that he could see the artistic advantage 
which would result from a slackening of the 
bonds of English prudery ; but it never occurred 
to him to make public protest against the pre- 
judices in force. Dickens could never have 
regarded it as within a story-teller's scope to 
attempt the conversion of his readers to a new 
view of literary morals. Against a political 
folly, or a social injustice, he would use every 
resource of his art, and see no reason to hesi- 



84 CHARLES DICKENS 

tate ; for there was the certainty of the approval 
of all good folk. To write a novel in a spirit 
of antagonism to all but a very few of his 
countrymen would have seemed to him a sort 
of practical bull ; is it not the law of novel- 
writing, first and foremost, that one shall aim 
at pleasing as many people as possible? 

In his preface to Pendennis Thackeray spoke 
very plainly on this subject. He honestly 
told his readers that they must not expect to 
find in his novel the whole truth about the life 
of a young man, seeing that, since the author 
of Tom J-ones, no English writer had been per- 
mitted such frankness. The same thing is 
remarked by Dickens in a letter which Forster 
prints ; a letter written from Paris, and com- 
menting on the inconsistency of English peo- 
ple, who, living abroad and reading foreign 
authors, complain that " the hero of an English 
book is always uninteresting." He proceeds : 
" But O my smooth friend, what a shining im- 
postor you must think yourself, and what an 
ass you must think me, when you suppose that 
by putting a brazen face upon it you can blot 
out of my knowledge the fact that this same 
unnatural young gentleman (if to be decent is 
to be necessarily unnatural), whom you meet 
in those other books and in mine, must be pre- 
sented to you in that unnatural aspect by reason 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 85 

of your morality, and is not to have, I will not 
say any of the indecencies you like, but not 
even any of the experiences, trials, perplexities, 
and confusions inseparable from the making or 
unmaking of all men" (Forster, Book XI. i). 
This he clearly saw ; but it never disturbed his 
conscience for the reason indicated. Thackeray, 
we may be sure, thought much more on the sub- 
ject, and in graver mood ; and as a result he 
allowed himself more liberty than Dickens — 
not without protest from the many-headed. 
There existed this difference between the two 
men. Thackeray had a strength not given to 
his brother in art. 

Only in one way can the public evince its 
sympathy with an author — by purchasing his 
books. It follows, then, that Dickens attached 
great importance ,to the varying demand for 
his complete novels, or for the separate monthly 
parts at their time of issue. Here again is a 
stone of stumbling for the disinterested artist 
who reads Dickens's life. We may select two 
crucial examples. 

After the first visit to America began the 
publication of Martin Chuzzlewit^ and it was 
seen at once that the instalments from month 
to month were less favourably received than 
those of the earlier books. The sixty thou- 
sand or so of regular purchasers decreased by 



86 CHARLES DICKENS 

about two-thirds. " Whatever the causes/' 
says Forster, " here was the undeniable fact 
of a grave depreciation of sale in his writings, 
unaccompanied by any falling off either in 
themselves or in the writer's reputation. It 
was very temporary ; but it was present, and 
to be dealt with accordingly " (Book IV. 2). 
Dickens's way of dealing with it was to make 
his hero suddenly resolve to go to America, 
Number Four closed with that declaration, 
and its results were seen, we are told, in an 
additional two thousand purchasers. Forster's 
words, of course, represent Dickens's view of 
the matter, which amounts to this: that how- 
ever thoroughly assured an author may be 
that he is doing his best, a falling-ofr in the 
sale of his work must needs cause him grave 
mental disturbance ; nay, that it must prompt 
him, as a matter of course, to changes of plan 
and solicitous calculation. He is to write, in 
short, with an eye steadily fixed upon his 
publisher's sale-room ; never to lose sight of 
that index of popular approval or the reverse. 
That phrase " to be dealt with accordingly " 
is more distasteful than one can easily express 
to anyone with a tincture of latter-day con- 
scientiousness in things of art. As I have 
said, it can be explained in a sense not at all 
dishonourable to Dickens ; but how much 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 87 

more pleasant would it be to read in its place 
some quite unparliamentary utterance, such, 
for example, as Scott made use of when 
William Blackwood requested him to change 
the end of one of his stories. 

It sounds odd to praise Scott, from this 
point of view, at the expense of Dickens. As 
a conscientious workman Dickens is far ahead 
of the author of Waverley^ who never dreamt 
of taking such pains as with the other novelist 
became habitual. We know, too, that Scott 
avowedly v/rote for money, and varied his 
subjects in accordance with the varying public 
taste. But let us suppose that his novels had 
appeared in monthly parts, and that such an 
experience had befallen him as this of Dickens ; 
can we easily imagine Walter Scott, in an atti- 
tude of commercial despondency, anxiously 
deliberating on the subject of his next chapter ? 
The thing is inconceivable. It marks the 
difference not only between two men, but two 
epochs. Not v^ith impunity, for all his gen- 
erous endowments, did Dickens come to m^an- 
hood in the year 1832 — the year in which 
Sir Walter said farewell to a world he no 
longer recognized. 

The other case w^hich I think it worth while 
to mention is that of Dickens's first Christmas 
story, the Carol, In those days Christmas 



88 CHARLES DICKENS 

publications did not come out three or four 
months before the season they were meant to 
celebrate. The Carol appeared only just be- 
fore Christmas Eve ; it was seized upon with 
enthusiasm, and edition followed edition. Un- 
luckily, the publisher had not exercised pru- 
dence in the " cost of production ; " the profits 
were small, and as a consequence we have the 
following letter, addressed to Forster in Jan- 
uary, 1 844 : " Such a night as I have passed ! 
I really believed I should never get up again 
until I had passed through all the horrors of 
a fever. I found the Carol accounts awaiting 
me, and they were the cause of it. The first 
six thousand copies show a profit of ^^230 ! 
and the last four will yield as much more. I 
had set my heart and soul upon a thousand 
clear. What a wonderful thing it is that such 
a great success should occasion me such intoler- 
able anxiety and disappointment ! My year's 
bills, unpaid, are so terrific, that all the energy 
and determination I can possibly exert will be 
required to clear me before I go abroad" 
(Book IV. 2). Now this letter is very dis- 
agreeable reading ; for, at so early a stage in 
its writer's career, it points already to the end. 
Those " terrific *' bills — had they been less ter- 
rific, say, by only one quarter, and had they been 
consistently kept at a point below the terrify- 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 89 

ing — how much better for Dickens himself 
and for the world. It could not be. The 
great middle class was growing enormously- 
rich with its coal mines and steam-engines, and 
the fact of his being an artist did not excuse a 
member of that class from the British necessity 
of keeping up appearances. So we have all 
but the "horrors of a fever" because a little 
book, which Thackeray rightly called " a na- 
tional benefit," brought in only a certain sum 
of money ! In his perturbation Dickens does 
himself injustice. He had not "set his heart 
and soul " on a thousand pounds ; he never in 
all his life set his heart and soul on wealth. 
" No man," he said once, in talk with friends, 
" attaches less importance to the possession of 
money, or less disparagement to the want of it, 
than I do," and. he spoke essential truth. It 
would be quite unjust to think of Dickens as 
invariably writing in fear of diminishing sales, 
or as trembling with cupidity whenever he 
opened his publishers' accounts. To under- 
stand the whole man we must needs remark 
the commercial side of him ; but his genius 
saved him from the worst results of the com- 
mercial spirit. 

It was not only of money that he stood in 
need. Remember his theatrical leanings, and 
one understands without difficulty how impor- 



90 CHARLES DICKENS 

tant to him was the stimulus of praise. From 
the early days, as has often been observed, the 
relations between Dickens and his public were 
notably personal; in his study, he sat, as it 
were, with hearers grouped about him, con- 
scious of their presence, happily, in quite an- 
other way than that already noticed. Like the 
actor (which indeed he ultimately became), his 
desire was for instant applause. Dickens could 
never have struggled for long years against the 
lack of appreciation. In coldness towards his 
work he would have seen its literary condem- 
nation, and have turned to a new endeavour. 
When the readers of Martin Chuzzlewit fall 
off he is troubled, first and foremost, by the 
failure of popular sympathy. He asks him- 
self, most anxiously, what the cause can be; 
and, with a touching deference to the voice of 
the crowd, is inclined to think that he has 
grov/n less interesting. For, observe, that 
Dickens never conceives himself, when he 
aims at popularity, as writing down to his 
audience. Of that he is wholly incapable; 
for that he has too much understanding of 
the conditions of literary success. Never yet 
was popularity, in whatsoever class, achieved 
by deUberate pursuit of a low ideal. The silli- 
est story which ever enjoyed a real vogue 
among the silliest readers was a true repre- 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 91 

sentatlon of the author's mind ; for only to 
writing of this kind — sincere though in fool- 
ishness — comes a response from multitudes 
of readers. Dickens might alter his intention, 
might change his theme ; but he never did so 
with the thought that he was condescending. 
In this respect a true democrat, he believed, 
probably without ever reflecting upon it, that 
the approved of the people was necessarily the 
supreme in art. At the same time, never man 
wrought more energetically to justify the peo- 
ple's choice. 

How does this attitude of mind affect 
Dickens's veracity as an artist concerned with 
everyday life ? In what degree, and in 
what directions, does he feel himself at lib- 
erty to disguise facts, to modify circumstances 
for the sake of giving pleasure or avoiding 
offence ? 

Our " realist " will hear of no such paltering 
with truth. Heedless of Pilate's question, he 
takes for granted that the truth can be got at, 
and that it is his plain duty to set it down with- 
out compromise ; or, if less crude in his percep- 
tions, he holds that truth, for the artist, is the 
impression produced on him, and that to con- 
vey this impression with entire sincerity is his 
sole reason for existing. To Dickens such a 
view of the artist's duty never presented itself. 



92 



CHARLES DICKENS 



Art, for him, was art precisely because it was 
not nature. Even our realists may recognize 
this, and may grant that it is the business of 
art to select, to dispose — under penalties if 
the result be falsification. But Dickens went 
further ; he had a moral purpose ; the thing 
above all others scornfully forbidden in our 
schools of rigid art. 

Let it not be forgotten that he made his 
public protest — moderate enough, but yet a 
protest — against smooth conventionalism. In 
the preface to Nicholas Nickleby he defends 
himself against those who censured him for not 
having made his hero " always blameless and 
agreeable." He had seen no reason, he says, 
for departing from the plain facts of human 
character. This is interesting when we call to 
mind the personality of Nicholas, who must 
have got into very refined company for his 
humanity to prove offensive. But the English 
novel was at a sorry pass in that day, and 
doubtless Dickens seriously believed that he 
had taken a bold step towards naturalism (had 
he known the word). Indeed, was he not jus- 
tified in thinking so ? Who, if not Dickens, 
founded the later school of English fiction ? 
He who as a young man had unconsciously 
obeyed Goethe's precept, taking hold upon the 
life nearest to him, making use of it for litera- 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 93 

ture, and proving that it was of interest, could 
rightly claim the honours of an innovator. 

The preface to Oliver Twisty in defending 
his choice of subject, strikes the note of com- 
promise, and at the same time declares in 
simple terms the author's purpose. After 
speaking of the romances of highwaymen then 
in vogue, which he held to be harmful, because 
so false to experience, he tells how he had 
resolved to give a true picture of a band of 
thieves, seeing no reason "why the dregs of life 
(as long as their speech did not offend the ear) 
should not serve the purpose of a moral." 
Here, then, we have it stated plainly that we 
are not to look for complete verisimilitude in 
the speech of his characters, and, again, that 
he only exhibits these characters in terror em^ or, 
at all events, to induce grave thoughts. When 
I come to discuss in detail Dickens's characteri- 
zation I shall have to ask how far it is possible 
truthfully to represent a foul-mouthed person, 
whilst taking care that the words he uses do 
not " offend the ear." Here I wish only to 
indicate the limits which Dickens imposed 
upon himself. He, it is clear, had no mis- 
giving ; to him Bill Sikes and Nancy and 
Charley Bates were convincing figures, though 
they never once utter a vile word — which, as 
a matter of fact, they one and all did in every 



94 CHARLES DICKENS 

other breath. He did not deliberately sacrifice 
truth to refinement. Moreover, he was con- 
vinced that he had done a moral service to the 
world. That both these ends were attained by 
^ help of unexampled buoyancy of spirit, an un- 
failing flow of the quaintest mirth, the kindliest 
humour, should in consistency appear to us the 
strangest thing of all — to us who strive so 
hard for " atmosphere," insist so strongly upon 
" objectivity " in the author. But in this 
matter Dickens troubled himself with no theory 
or argument. He wrote as his soul dictated, 
and surely could not have done better. 

Admitting his limits, accepting them even 
gladly, he was yet possessed with a sense of 
the absolute reality of everything he pictured 
forth. Had the word been in use he must 
necessarily have called himself a Realist. It is 
one of the biographical commonplaces concern- 
ing Dickens. Everyone knows how he excited 
himself over his writing, how he laughed and 
cried with his imaginary people, how he had 
all but made himself ill with grief over the 
deathbed of little Nell or of Paul Dombey. 
This means, of course, that his imagination 
worked with perfect freedom, had the fullest 
scope, without ever coming in conflict with the 
prepossessions of his public. Permission to 
write as Smollett and as Fielding wrote could 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 95 

in no way have advantaged Dickens. He was 
the born story-teller of a certain day, of a cer- 
tain class. Again, he does not deem himself 
the creator of a world, but the laboriously 
faithful painter of that about him. He labours 
his utmost to preserve illusion. Dickens could 
never have been guilty of that capital crime 
against art so light-heartedly committed by 
Anthony Trollope, who will begin a paragraph 
in his novels with some such words as these : 
" Now, if this were fact, and not a story . . ." 
For all that, Trollope was the more literal 
copier of life. But his figures do not survive 
as those of Dickens, who did in fact create — 
created individuals, to become at once and for 
ever representative of their time. 

Whilst at work, no questioning troubled 
him. But in speaking of the results, he occa- 
sionally allows us a glimpse of his mind ; we see 
how he reconciled art with veracity. The best 
instance I can recall is his comment upon 
" Doctor Marigold," the Cheap Jack, of whom 
he drew so sympathetic a picture. He says, 
" It is wonderfully like the real thing, of course 
a little refined and humoured." Note the of 
course. Art was art, not nature. He had to 
make his Cheap Jack presentable, to disguise 
anything repellent, to bring out every interest- 
ing and attractive quality. A literal transcript 



96 CHARLES DICKENS 

of the man's being would not have seemed to 
him within his province. But it is just this 
" refining " and " humouring " which our day 
holds traitorous ; the outcome of it is called 
Idealism. 

At times Dickens's idealism goes further, 
leading him into misrepresentation of social 
facts. Refining and humouring, even from his 
point of view, must have their limits ; and 
these he altogether exceeded in a character such 
as Lizzie Hexam, the heroine of Our Mutual 
Friend. The child of a Thames-side loafer, 
uneducated, and brought up amid the rough- 
est surroundings, Lizzie uses language and 
expresses sentiment which would do credit to 
a lady in whatsoever position. In the same 
way, the girl called Alice Marlow, who plays 
so melodramatic a part in Dombey and Son, rep- 
resents a total impossibility, the combination 
of base origin and squalid life, with striking 
mental power, strikingly developed. This kind 
of thing is permissible to no artist who deals 
with the actual world. Using a phrase ger- 
mane to our subject, it is morally mischievous. 
Many a novelist has sinned in this direction ; 
above all, young authors misled by motives 
alien to art, who delight in idealizing girls of 
the lower, or lowest class. Dickens had out- 
grown that stage of pardonable weakness when 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 97 

he wrote Our Mutual Friend, He wished, 
of course, to contrast the low-born Lizzie 
Hexam with persons, in the same story, of 
what is called good birth and breeding, and 
to show her their superior ; a purpose which 
aggravates his fault, the comparison being so 
obviously unfair. In this connection I recall 
a figure from Thackeray ; the uneducated girl 
with whom Arthur Pendennis forms a perilous 
acquaintance. Fanny Bolton is one of the 
truest characters in all fiction, — so unpleas- 
antly true, that readers ignorant of her class 
might imagine the author to have drawn her 
in a spirit of social prejudice. Never was his 
hand more admirably just. Fanny Bolton is 
one of the instances I had in mind when I 
alluded to Thackeray's power in describing 
other modes of life than that with which his 
name is associated. 

Here Dickens idealized to please himself 
In the end, it came to the same thing when we 
see him hesitating over a design of which he 
doubted the popular acceptance. Walter Gay, 
in Dombey and Son, whose career is so delight- 
fully prosperous, seemed at one moment about 
to be condemned to a very different fate. " I 
think," writes Dickens in a letter, "it would 
be a good thing to disappoint all the expecta- 
tions this chapter seems to raise of his happy 

7 



98 CHARLES DICKENS 

connection with the story and the heroine, and 
to show him gradually and naturally trailing 
away from that love of adventure and boyish 
lightheartedness, into negligence, idleness, dis- 
sipation, dishonesty, and ruin. To show, in 
short, that common, everyday miserable de- 
clension, of which we know so much in our 
ordinary life " (Forster, Book VI. 2). Here, 
indeed, is a suggestion of " realism ; " but we 
know, in reading it, that Dickens could never 
have carried it out. He adds, " Do you think 
it may be done, without making people angry ?" 
Certainly it could not ; Dickens knew it could 
not, even when the artist deep within him 
brooded over the theme ; he gave it up almost 
at once. Forster points out that something 
of the same idea was eventually used in Bleak 
House, But Richard Carstone, though he 
wastes his life, does not sink to " dissipation, 
dishonesty, and ruin." The hand was stayed 
where the picture would have become too pain- 
ful alike for author and public — always, or 
nearly always, in such entire sympathy. The 
phrase about " making people angry " signi- 
fies much less than it would in a novelist of 
to-day. It might well have taken the form : 
" Can I bring myself to do this thing ? " 

To return for a moment to Our Mutual 
Friend, I never look into that book without 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 99 

feeling a suspicion that Dickens originally 
meant Mr. Boffin to suffer a real change of 
character, to become in truth the miserly cur- 
mudgeon which we are told he only pretended 
to be. Careful reading of the chapters which 
bear on this point has confirmed my impres- 
sion ; for which, however, there is no support 
that I know of, in Forster or elsewhere. It 
may well have been that here again Dickens, 
face to face with an unpleasant bit of truth, felt 
his heart fail him. Again he may have asked, 
"Will it make people angry?" If so — on 
this I wish to insist — it was in no spirit of 
dishonest compliance that he changed his plan. 
To make people angry would have been to 
defeat his own prime purpose. Granting two 
possible Mr. Boffins : he who becomes a miser 
in reality, and he who, for a good purpose, acts 
the miser's part ; how much better to choose 
the Mr. Boffin who will end in hearty laughter 
and overflowing benevolence ! 

Avoidance of the disagreeable, as a topic 
uncongenial to art — this is Dickens's principle. 
There results, necessarily, a rather serious 
omission from his picture of life. Writing 
once from Boulogne, and describing the pier as 
he saw it of an evening, he says, " I never did 
behold such specimens of the youth of my 
country, male and female, as pervade that place. 



loo CHARLES DICKENS 

They are really in their vulgarity and inso- 
lence quite disheartening. One is so fearfully 
ashamed of them, and they contrast so very 
unfavourably with the natives " (Forster, Book 
VII. 4). But Dickens certainly had no need to 
visit Boulogne to study English " vulgarity and 
insolence ; " it blared around him wherever he 
walked in London, and, had he wrought in 
another spirit, it must have taken a very large 
place in every one of his books. He avoided, 
or showed it only in such forms as amused 
rather than disgusted. The Boulogne pier- 
walker, a monumental creature at that day, 
deserved his niche in fiction ; Dickens glanced 
at him, and passed him by. 

Two examples dwell in my memory which 
show him in the mood for downright fact of 
the unpleasant sort. More might be discov- 
ered, but these, I think, would remain the note- 
worthy instances of "realism" in Dickens; 
moments when, for whatever reason, he saw fit 
to tell a harsh truth without any mitigation. 
One occurs in the short story of Doctor Mari- 
gold. We have seen that the figure of the 
Cheap Jack was "refined and humoured;" 
not so that of the Cheap Jack's wife, the brutal 
woman who ill-uses and all but kills her child. 
This picture is remorseless in everyday truth ; 
no humour softens it, no arbitrary event checks 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE loi 

the course of the woman's hateful cruelty. 
The second example is George Silvermans 
Explanation^ another short story, which from 
beginning to end is written in atone of uncom- 
promising bitterness. Being told by Silverman 
himself, its consistent gloom is dramatically 
appropriate and skilful. Here we have a pic- 
ture of pietistic virulence the like of which can- 
not be found elsewhere in Dickens ; hard bare 
fact ; never a smile to lighten the impression ; 
no interference with the rigour of destiny. Any- 
thing but characteristic, this little story is still 
a notable instance of Dickens's power. Were 
the author unknown it would be attributed to 
some strenuous follower of our " realistic " 
school. 

From his duty as he conceived it, of teach- 
ing a moral lesson, Dickens never departs. 
He has an unfailing sense of the high impor- 
tance of his work from this point of view. 
Not that it preoccupies him, as was the case 
with George Eliot, and weighs upon him as he 
writes ; naturally and calmly, without suspicion 
of pose, without troublous searching of con- 
science, he sees his subject as a moral lesson, 
and cannot understand the position of an artist 
to whom such thought never occurs. And his 
morality is of the simplest; a few plain ordi- 
nances serve for human guidance ; to infringe 



I02 CHARLES DICKENS 

them is to be marked for punishment more or 
less sensational ; to follow the path of the just 
is to ensure a certain amount of prosperity, and 
reward unlimited in buoyancy of heart. The 
generality of readers like to see a scoundrel get 
his deserts, and Dickens, for the most part, 
gives them abundant satisfaction. No half 
measures. When Pecksniff is unmasked, we 
have the joy of seeing him felled to the ground 
in the presence of a jubilant company. Nor 
does this suffice ; he and his daughter Cherry, 
both having forfeited all the sympathies of 
decent folk, come to actual beggary, and prowl 
about the murky streets. Nothing more im- 
probable than such an end for Mr. Pecksniff 
or for his daughter — who was very well able 
to take care of herself; and obviously a deeper 
moral would be implied in the continued flour- 
ishing of both ; but Dickens and his public 
were impatient to see the rascal in the dirt, the 
shrew beside him. Sampson Brass and his 
sister, whose crime against society is much 
more serious, pass their later years in the same 
squalid defeat; yet we feel assured that the 
virile Sally, at all events, made a much better 
fight against the consequences of her rascality. 
Lady Dedlock, having sinned in a manner 
peculiarly unpardonable, is driven by remorse 
from her luxurious home, and expires in one of 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 103 

the foulest corners of London. Remorse alone, 
however poignant and enduring, would not 
seem an adequate penalty ; we must see the 
proud lady, the sinful woman, literally brought 
low, down to the level of the poor wretch who 
was her accomplice. Ill-doers less conspicu- 
ous are let off with a punishment which can 
be viewed facetiously, but punished they are. 
It is all so satisfying ; it so rounds off our con- 
ception of hfe. Nothing so abhorred by the 
multitude as a lack of finality in stories, a 
vagueness of conclusion which gives them the 
trouble of forming surmises. 

Equally, of course, justice is tempered with 
mercy. Who would have the heart to demand 
rigour of the law for Mr. Jingle and Job Trot- 
ter ? We see them all but starved to death 
in a debtors* prison, and that is enough ; their 
conversion to honesty gives such scope for Mr. 
Pickwick's delightful goodness that nothing 
could be more in accord with the fitness of 
things. Squeers or Mr. Creakle we will by no 
means forgive ; nay, of their hard lot, so well 
merited, we will make all the fun we can ; but 
many a pleasant scamp who has shaken our 
sides shall be put in the way of earning an honest 
living. Profoundly human, however crude to 
an age that cannot laugh and cry so readily. 
Good sound practical teaching, which will help 



I04 CHARLES DICKENS 

the soul of man long after more pretentious 
work has returned to dust. 

Ahj those final chapters of Dickens ! How 
eagerly they are read by the young, and with 
what a pleasant smile by elders who prize the 
good things of Hterature ! No one is for- 
gotten, and many an unsuspected bit of hap- 
piness calls aloud for gratitude to the author. 
Do you remember Mr. Mell, the underpaid 
and bullied usher in David Copperfield, — the 
poor broken-spirited fellow whose boots will 
not bear another mending, — who uses an 
hour of liberty to visit his mother in the 
alms-house, and gladden her heart by piping 
sorry music on his flute ? We lose sight of 
him, utterly ; knowing only that he has been 
sent about his business after provoking the 
displeasure of the insolent lad Steerforth. 
Then, do you remember how, at the end of 
the book, David has news from Australia, 
delicious news about Mr. Micawber, and Mrs. 
Gummidge, and sundry other people, and how 
in reading the Colonial paper, he suddenly 
comes upon the name of Dr. Melly a distin- 
guished man at the Antipodes ? Who so 
stubborn a theorist that this kindly figment 
of the imagination does not please him ? Who 
would prefer to learn the cold fact ; that Mell, 
the rejected usher, sank from stage to stage of 



ART, VERACITY, PURPOSE 105 

wretchedness and died — uncertain which • — 
in the street or the workhouse ? 

It was not by computing the density of the 
common brain, by gauging the force of vulgar 
prejudice, that Charles Dickens rose to his 
supreme popularity. Nature made him the 
mouthpiece of his kind, in all that relates to 
simple emotions and homely thought. Who 
can more rightly be called an artist than he 
who gave form and substance to the ideal of 
goodness and purity, of honour, justice, mercy, 
whereby the dim multitudes falteringly seek to 
direct their steps ? This was his task in life, 
to embody the better dreams of ordinary men ; 
to fix them as bright realities, for weary eyes to 
look upon. He achieved it in the strength of 
a faultless sympathy ; following the true in- 
stincts which it is so unjust — so unintelligent 
— to interpret as mere commercial shrewdness 
or dulness of artistic perception. Art is not 
single ; to every great man his province, his 
mode. During at least one whole generation, 
Charles Dickens, in the world of literature, 
meant England. For his art, splendidly tri- 
umphant, made visible to all mankind the 
characteristic virtues, the typical shortcomings, 
of the homely English race. 



CHAPTER V 

CHARACTERIZATION 

The familiar objection to Dickens's characters 
that they are " so unreal '* (a criticism com- 
mon in the mouths of persons who would 
be the last to tolerate downright veracity in 
fiction) is in part explained — in part justi- 
fied — by the dramatic conduct of his stories. 
What unreality there is, arises for the most 
part from necessities of " plot." This may be 
illustrated by a comparison between two figures 
wherein the master has embodied so much 
homely sweetness and rectitude that both are 
popular favourites. The boatman Peggotty 
and Joe Gargery the blacksmith are drawn on 
similar lines ; in both the gentlest nature is 
manifest beneath a ruggedness proper to their 
callings. There is a certain resemblance, too, 
between the stories in which each plays his 
part; childHke in their simple virtues, both 
become strongly attached to a child — not 
their own — living under the same roof, and 



CHARACTERIZATION 107 

both suffer a grave disappointment in this 
affection ; the boatman's niece is beguiled from 
him to her ruin, the blacksmith's little relative 
grows into a conceited youth, ashamed of the 
old companion and the old home. To readers 
in general I presume that Peggotty is better 
known than Joe ; David Copperfield being more 
frequently read than Great Expectations ; but 
if we compare the two figures as to their 
"reality," we must decide in favour of Gar- 
gery. I think him a better piece of workman- 
ship all round ; the prime reason, however, for 
his standing out so much more solidly in one's 
mind than Little Emily's uncle, is that he 
lives in a world, not of melodrama, but of 
everyday cause and effect. The convict Mag- 
witch and his strange doings make no such de- 
mand upon one's credulity as the story of Emily 
and Steerforth, told as it is, with its extrava- 
gant situations and flagrantly artificial develop- 
ment. Pip is so thoroughly alive that we can 
forget his dim relations with Satis House. 
But who can put faith in Mr. Peggotty, when 
he sets forth to search for his niece over the 
highways and by-ways of Europe ? Who can 
for a moment put faith in Emily herself after 
she has ceased to be the betrothed of Ham ? 
As easily could one believe that David Cop- 
perfield actually overheard that wildly fantastic 



io8 CHARLES DICKENS 

dialogue in the lodging-house between the lost 
girl and Rosa Dartle. 

Many such examples might be adduced of 
excellent, or masterly, characterization spoilt 
by the demand for effective intrigue. We call 
to mind this or that person in circumstances 
impossible of credit ; and hastily declare that 
character and situation are alike unreal. And 
hereby hangs another point worth touching 
upon ! I have heard it very truly remarked 
that, in our day, people for the most part 
criticise Dickens from a recollection of their 
reading in childhood ; they do not come fresh 
to him with mature minds ; in general, they 
never read him at all after childish years. This 
is an obvious source of much injustice. 
Dickens is good reading for all times of life, 
as are all the great imaginative writers. Let 
him be read by children together with Don 
Quixote. But who can speak with authority 
of Cervantes who knows him only from an 
acquaintance made at ten years old ? To the 
mind of a child Dickens is, or ought to be, 
fascinating — (alas for the whole subject of 
children's reading nowadays ! ) — and most of 
the fascination is due to that romantic treat- 
ment of common life which is part, indeed, of 
Dickens's merit, but has smaller value and in- 
terest to the older mind. Much of his finest 



CHARACTLRIZATION 



109 



humour is lost upon children ; much of his 
perfect description ; and all his highest achieve- 
ment in characterization. Taking Dickens 
" as read," people inflict a loss upon them- 
selves and do a wrong to the author. Who, 
in childhood, ever cared much for Little 
Dorrit ? The reason is plain ; in this book 
Dickens has comparatively Httle of his wonted 
buoyancy ; throughout, it is in a graver key. 
True, a house falls down in a most exciting 
way, and this the reader will remember ; all 
else is to him a waste. We hear, accordingly, 
that nothing good can be said for Little Dorrit, 
Whereas, a competent judge, taking up the 
book as he would any other, will find in it 
some of the best work Dickens ever did ; and 
especially in this matter of characterization: 
pictures so wholly admirable, so marvellously 
observed and so exquisitely presented, that he is 
tempted to call Little Dorrit the best book of all. 
Again, it is not unusual to seek in Dickens's 
characters for something he never intended to 
be there ; in other words, his figures are often 
slighted because they represent a class in so- 
ciety which lacks many qualities desired by 
cultivated readers, and possesses very promi- 
nently the distasteful features such a critic could 
well dispense with. You lay down, for in- 
stance, Thackeray's Pendennis^ and soon after 



no CHARLES DICKENS 

you happen to take up Bombey and Son, Com- 
parisons arise. Whilst reading of Major Bag- 
stock, you find your thoughts wandering to 
Major Pendennis ; when occupied (rather 
disdainfully) with Mr. Toots, you suddenly 
recall Foker. What can be the immediate 
outcome of such contrast? It seems impos- 
sible to deny to Thackeray a great superiority 
in the drawing of character ; his aristocratic 
Major and his wealthy young jackass are so 
much more " real," that is to say, so much more 
familiar, than the promoted vulgarian Bagstock 
and the enriched whipper-snapper Toots. A 
hasty person would be capable of exclaiming 
that Dickens had plainly taken suggestions 
from Thackeray, and made but poor use 
of them. Observe, however, that Dombey 
and Son appeared, complete, in 1 848 ; Pen- 
dennis in 1849. Observe, too, the explanation 
of the whole matter ; that Bagstock and Toots 
represent quite as truthfully figures possible in 
a certain class, as do Thackeray's characters 
those to be found in a rank distinctly higher. 
If Thackeray (who needed no suggestions from 
others' books) was indeed conscious of this 
whimsical parallel, we can only admire the skill 
and finish with which he worked it out. But 
assuredly he dreamt of no slight to Dickens's 
performance. They had wrought in different 



CHARACTERIZATION 1 1 1 

material. Social distinctions are sufficiently- 
pronounced even in our time of revolution ; 
fifty years ago they were much more so. And 
precisely what estranges the cultivated reader 
in Bagstock and Toots, is nothing more or less 
than evidence of their creator's truthfulness. 

A wider question confronts one in looking 
steadfastly at the masterpieces of a novelist 
concerned with the lower, sometimes the lowest, 
modes of life in a great city. Among all the 
names immortalized by Dickens none is more 
widely familiar than that of Mrs. Gamp. It is 
universally admitted that in Mrs. Gamp we 
have a creation such as can be met with only 
in the greatest writers ; a figure at once indi- 
vidual and typical ; a marvel of humorous pre- 
sentment ; vital in the highest degree attainable 
by this art of fiction. From the day of her 
first appearance on the stage, Mrs. Gamp has 
been a delight, a wonder, a byword. She 
stands unique, no other novelist can show a 
piece of work, in the same kind, worthy of a 
place beside her ; he must go to the very 
heights of world-literature, to him who bodied 
forth Dame Quickly, and Juliet's nurse, for the 
suggestion of equivalent power. Granted, then, 
that Mrs. Gamp has indubitable existence ; 
who and what is she ? Well, a sick-nurse, 
living in Kingsgate Street, Holborn, in a filthy 



112 CHARLES DICKENS 

room somewhere upstairs, and summoned for 
nursing of all kinds by persons more or less 
well-to-do, who are so unfortunate as to know 
of no less offensive substitute. We are told, 
and can believe, that in the year 1 844 (the date 
of Martin Chuzzlewit) few people did know of 
any substitute for Mrs. Gamp ; that she was 
an institution ; that she carried her odious 
vices and her criminal incompetence from house 
to house in decent parts in London. Dickens 
knew her only too well ; had observed her at 
moments of domestic crisis ; had learnt her 
language and could reproduce it (or most of it) 
with surprising accuracy. In plain words, then, 
we are speaking of a very loathsome creature ; 
a sluttish, drunken, avaricious, dishonest woman. 
Meeting her in the flesh, we should shrink dis- 
gusted, so well does the foulness of her person 
correspond with the baseness of her mind. 
Hearing her speak, we should turn away in 
half-amused contempt. Yet, when we en- 
counter her in the pages of Dickens, we cannot 
have too much of Mrs. Gamp's company ; her 
talk is an occasion of uproarious mirth, we 
never dream of calling her to moral judgment, 
but laugh the more, the more infamously she 
sees lit to behave. Now, in what sense can 
this figure in literature be called a copy of the 
human original ? 



CHARACTERIZATION 1 13 

I am perfectly aware that this inquiry goes 
to the roots of the theory of Art. Here I 
have no space (nor would it be the proper 
moment) to discuss all the issues that are in- 
volved in a question so direct and natural ; but 
if we are to talk at all about the people in 
Dickens, we must needs start with some under- 
standing of what is implied when we call them 
true, life-like, finely presented. Is not the fact 
in itself very remarkable, that by dint (it seems) 
of omitting those very features which in life 
most strongly impress us, an artist in fiction 
can produce something which we applaud as 
an inimitable portrait? That for disgust he 
can give us delight, and yet leave us glorying 
in his verisimilitude ? 

Turn to another art. Open the great 
volume of Hogarth, and look at the several 
figures of women which present a fair cor- 
respondence with that of Mrs. Gamp. We 
admire the artist's observation, his great skill, 
his moral significance, even his grim humour ; 
then — we close the book with a feeling of 
relief. With these faces who would spend hours 
of leisure? The thing has been supremely 
well done, and we are glad of it, and will praise 
the artist unreservedly ; but his basely grinning 
and leering women must not hang upon the 
wall, to be looked at and talked of with all and 

8 



114 CHARLES DICKENS 

sundry. Hogarth has copied — In the strict 
sense of the word. He gives us life — and we 
cannot bear it. 

The Mrs. Gamp of our novel is a piece of 
the most delicate idealism. It is a sublimation 
of the essence of Gamp. No novelist (say 
what he will) ever gave us a picture of life 
which was not idealized ; but there are degrees, 
degrees of purpose and of power. Juliet*s 
nurse is an idealized portrait, but it comes 
much nearer to the real thing than Mrs. Gamp ; 
in our middle-class England we cannot alto- 
gether away with the free-spoken dame of 
Verona ; we Bowdlerize her — of course damag- 
ing her in the process. Mrs. Berry, in Richard 
Feverel, is idealized, but she smacks too 
strongly of the truth for boudoir readers. 
Why, Moll Flanders herself is touched and 
softened, for all the author's illusive directness. 
In Mrs. Gamp, Dickens has done his own 
Bowdlerizing, but with a dexterity which serves 
only to heighten his figure's effectiveness. 
Vulgarity he leaves ; that is of the essence of 
the matter ; vulgarity unsurpassable is the note 
of Mrs. Gamp. Vileness, on the other hand, 
becomes grotesquerie, wonderfully converted 
into a subject of laughter. Her speech, the 
basest ever heard from human tongue, by a 
process of infinite subtlety, which leaves it the 



CHARACTERIZATION 



113 



same yet not the same, is made an endless 
amusement, a source of quotation for laughing 
lips incapable of unclean utterance. 

Idealism, then : confessed idealism. But let 
us take another character from another book, 
also a woman supposed to represent a phase 
of low life in London. Do you recall "good 
Mrs. Brown," the hag who strips little Flor- 
ence Dombey of her clothes ? And do you 
remember that this creature has a daughter, 
her name Alice Marlow, who — presumably 
having been a domestic servant, or a shop girl, 
or something of the kind — was led astray by 
Mr. Carker of the shining teeth, and has be- 
come a wandering nondescript ? Now in Alice 
Marlow we again have idealism ; but of a dif- 
ferent kind. This child of good Mrs. Brown, 
tramping into London on a bitter night, is 
found on the road-side and taken home for 
tendance by Mr. Carker's sister, neither being 
aware of the other's identity ; and having sub- 
mitted to this kindness and having accepted 
money, the girl goes her way. That same 
night she learns who has befriended her, and 
forthwith rushes back a few miles, through 
storm and darkness, to fling the alms at the 
giver. Outlines of a story sufficiently theatri- 
cal ; but the dialogue ! One fails to under- 
stand how Dickens brought himself to pen the 



:i6 CHARLES DICKENS 

language — at great length — he puts into this 
puppet's mouth. It is doubtful whether one 
could pick out a single sentence, a single phrase, 
such as the real Alice Marlow could conceiv- 
ably have used. Her passion is vehement; no 
impossible thing. The words in which she 
utters it would be appropriate to the most 
stagey of wronged heroines — be that who it 
may. A figure less life-like will not be found 
in any novel ever written. Yet Dickens doubt- 
less intended it as legitimate idealization ; a sort 
of type of the doleful multitude of betrayed 
women. He meant it for imagination exalting 
common fact. But the fact is not exalted ; it 
has simply vanished. And the imagination is of 
a kind that avails nothing on any theme. In 
Mrs. Gamp a portion of truth is omitted; in 
Alice Marlow there is substitution of falsity. 
By the former process, true idealism may be 
reached ; by the latter, one arrives at nothing 
but attitude and sham. 

Of course omission and veiling do not suffice 
to create Mrs. Gamp. In his alchemy Dickens 
had command of the menstruum which alone is 
powerful enough to effect such transmutation 
as this ; it is called humour. Humour, be 
it remembered, is inseparable from charity. 
Not only did it enable him to see this coarse 
creature as an amusing person ; it inspired 



CHARACTERIZATION 117 

him with that large tolerance which looks 
through things external, gives its full weight 
to circumstance, and preserves a modesty, a 
humility, in human judgment. We can form 
some notion of what Mrs. Gamp would have 
become in the hands of a rigorous realist, with 
scorn and disgust (implied inevitably) taking 
the place of humour. We reject the photo- 
graph ; it avails us nothing in art or life. 
Humour deals gently with fact and fate ; in its 
smile there is forbearance, in its laugh there 
is kindliness. With falsehood — however well 
meant — it is incompatible ; when it has done 
its work as solvent, the gross adherents are 
dissipated, the essential truth remains. Do 
you ask for the Platonic idea of London's 
monthly nurse early in Queen Victorians reign ? 
Dickens shows it you embodied. At such a 
thing as this, crawling between earth and 
heaven, what can one do but laugh ? Its ex- 
istence is a puzzle, a wo-nder. The class it 
represents shall be got rid of as speedily as pos- 
sible ; well and good ; we cannot tolerate such 
a public nuisance. But the individual — so 
perfect a specimen — shall be preserved for all 
time by the magic of a great writer's deep-see- 
ing humour, and shall be known as Mrs. Gamp. 
For a moment, contrast with this master- 
piece a picture in which Dickens has used his 



ii8 CHARLES DICKENS 

idealism on material more promising, though 
sought amid surroundings sufficiently like 
those which formed the portrait of Kingsgate 
Street. The most successful character in his 
stories written to be read at Christmas is Mrs. 
Lirriper. She belongs to a class distinguished 
then, as now, by its uncleanness, its rapacity, 
its knavery, its ignorance. Mrs. Lirriper keeps 
a London lodging-house. Here, in depicting 
an individual, Dickens has not typified a class. 
He idealizes this woman, but finds in her, 
ready to his hand, the qualities of goodness 
and tenderness and cheery honesty, so that 
there is no question of transmuting a subject 
repulsive to the senses. Mrs. Lirriper is quite 
possible, even in a London lodging-house ; in 
the flesh, however, we should not exactly seek 
her society. Her talk (idealized with excellent 
adroitness) would too often jar upon the ear ; 
her person would be, to say the least, unat- 
tractive. In the book, she has lost these acci- 
dents of position : we are first amused, then 
drawn on to like, to admire, to love her. An 
unfortunate blemish — the ever-recurring arti- 
ficiality of story — threatens to make her dim ; 
but Mrs. Lirriper triumphs over this. We 
bear her in memory as a person known — a 
person most unhappily circumstanced, set in 
a gloomy sphere ; but of such sweet nature 



CHARACTERIZATION 119 

that we forget her inevitable defects, even as 
we should those of an actual acquaintance of 
like character. 

In looking back on the events of life, do we 
not see them otherwise than, at the time, they 
appeared to us? The harsh is smoothed ; the 
worst of everything is forgotten ; things pleas- 
ant come into relief This (a great argument 
for optimism) is a similitude of Dickens's art. 
Like Time he obscures the unpleasing, empha- 
sizes all we are glad to remember. Time does 
not falsify ; neither does Dickens, whenever his 
art is unalloyed. 

Let us turn to his literary method. It is 
that of all the great novelists. To set before 
his reader the image so vivid in his own mind, 
he simply describes and reports. We have, in 
general, a very p/ecise and complete picture of 
externals — the face, the gesture, the habit. In 
this Dickens excels ; he proves to us, by sheer 
force of visible detail, how actual was the 
mental form from which he drew. We learn 
the tone of voice, the trick of utterance ; he 
declared that every word spoken by his char- 
acters was audible to him. Then does the 
man reveal himself in colloquy ; sometimes once 
for all, sometimes by degrees, in chapter after 
chapter — though this is seldom the case. We 
know these people because we see and hear them. 



I20 CHARLES DICKENS 

In a few instances he added deliberate analy- 
sis ; it was never well done — always super- 
fluous. Very rarely has analysis of character 
justified itself in fiction. To Dickens the 
method was alien : he could make no use 
whatever of it. In the early book which illus- 
trates all his defects, Nicholas Nickleby, we have 
some dreary pages concerned with the inner 
man of Ralph Nickleby ; seeing that the outer 
is but shadowy, these details cannot interest; 
they show, moreover, much crudity and con- 
ventionality of thought. Later, an analysis is 
attempted of Mr. Dombey — very laborious, 
very long. It does not help us in the least to 
understand Paul's father, himself one of the 
least satisfactory of Dickens*s leading persons. 
One may surmise that the author felt some- 
thing of this, and went out of his wonted way 
in an endeavour to give the image more life. 

It results from Dickens's weakness in the 
devising of incident, in the planning of story^ 
that he seldom develops character through 
circumstance. There are conversions, but we 
do not much believe in them ; they smack of 
the stage. Possibly young Martin Chuzzlewit 
may be counted an exception ; but there is 
never much life in him. From this point of 
view Dickens's best bit of work is Pip, in 
Great Expectations ; Pip, the narrator of his 



CHARACTERIZATION 121 

own story, who exhibits very well indeed the 
growth of a personality, the interaction of 
character and event. One is not permitted 
to lose sight of the actual author ; though so 
much more living than Esther Summerson, 
Pip is yet embarrassed, like her, with the gift 
of humour. We know very well whose voice 
comes from behind the scenes when Pip is 
describing Mr. Wopsle's dramatic venture. 
Save for this, we acknowledge a true self-reve- 
lation. What could be better than the lad^s 
picture of his state of mind, when, after learn- 
ing that he has " great expectations," he quits 
the country home of his childhood and goes to 
London ? " I formed a plan in outline for 
bestowing a dinner of roast beef and plum-pud- 
ding, a pint of ale, and a gallon of condescen- 
sion upon everybody in the village " (chap, 
xix.). It is one of many touches which give 
high value to this book. 

As a rule, the more elaborate Dickens's con- 
ception of character, the smaller his success in 
working it out. Again and again he endeav- 
oured to present men and women of exception- 
ally strong passions : the kind of persons who 
make such a figure on the boards, where they 
frown and clench their fists, and utter terrible 
phrases. It began in Oliver Twist with the 
man called Monk ; in Barnaby came the mur- 



122 CHARLES DICKENS 

derer ; In Chuzzlewit appears the mask known 
as old Martin, a thing of sawdust. Later the 
efforts in this direction are more conscientious, 
more laboured, but rarely more successful. 
An exception, perhaps, may be noted in Brad- 
ley Headstone, the lover of Lizzie Hexam, 
whose consuming passion here and there con- 
vinces, all the more for its well-contrived con- 
trast with the character of the man whom 
Lizzie prefers. Charley Hexam, too, is life- 
like, on a lower plane. The popular voice 
pleads for Sidney Carton ; yes, he is well 
presented — but so easy to forget. Think, 
on the other hand, of the long list of women 
meant to be tragic, who, one and all, must 
be judged failures. Edith Dombey, with her 
silent wrath and ludicrous behaviour, who, 
intended for a strong, scornful nature, dumbly 
goes to the sacrifice when bidden by her fool- 
ish mother, and then rails at the old worldling 
for the miseries needlessly brought upon her- 
self Rosa Dartle, at first a promising sug- 
gestion, but falling away into exaggerations 
of limelight frenzy. Lady Dedlock and her 
maid Hortense — which is the more obvious 
waxwork ? Mrs. Clennam, in Little Dorrit, 
is wrought so patiently and placed in so pic- 
turesque a scene that one laments over her 
Impossibility; her so-called talk is, perhaps, 



CHARACTERIZATION 123 

less readable than anything in Dickens. The 
same book shows us, or aims at showing us. 
Miss Wade and Tattycoram, from both of 
whom we turn incredulous. Of Miss Ha- 
visham one grudges to speak ; her ghostly 
presence does its best to spoil an admirable 
novel. Women, all these, only in name; a 
cause of grief to the lovers of the master, a 
matter of scoffing to his idler critics. When 
we come to women of everyday stature, then 
indeed it is a different thing. So numerous 
are these, and so important in an estimate of 
Dickens's power of characterization, that I 
must give them a chapter to themselves. 

Neither at a black-hearted villain was he 
really good, though he prided himself on his 
achievements in this kind. Jonas Chuzzlewit 
is the earliest worth mention ; and what can 
be said of Jonas, save that he is a surly ruffian 
of whom one knows very little ? The " set- 
ting" of his part is very strong; much power- 
ful writing goes to narrate his history ; but 
the man remains mechanical. Mr. Carker 
hardly aims at such completeness of scoundrel- 
dom, but he would be a fierce rascal — if not 
so bent on exhibiting his teeth, which remind 
one of the working wires. Other shapes 
hover in lurid vagueness. Whether, last of 
all, John Jasper would have shown a great 



124 CHARLES DICKENS 

advance, must remain doubtful. The first 
half of Edwin Drood shows him picturesquely, 
and little more. We discover no hint of real 
tragedy. The man seems to us a very vulgar 
assassin, and we care not at all what becomes 
of him. 

Against these set the gallery of portraits in 
which Dickens had displayed to us the legal 
world of his day. Here he painted from 
nature, and with an artist's love of his subject. 
From the attorneys and barristers of Pickwick^ 
sportive themselves and a cause of infinite 
mirth in others, to the Old Bailey practitioners 
so admirably grim in Great Expectations^ one's 
eye passes along a row of masterpieces. Nay, 
it is idle to use the pictorial simile ; here are 
men with blood in their veins — some of them 
with a good deal of it on their hands. They 
will not be forgotten ; whether we watch the 
light comedy of Jorkins and Spenlow, or 
observe the grim gravity of Mr. Jaggers, it is 
with the same entire conviction. In this de- 
partment of his work Dickens can be said to 
idealize only in the sense of the finest art ; no 
praise can exaggerate his dexterity in setting 
forth these examples of supreme realism. As 
a picture of actual Hfe in a certain small world 
Bleak House is his greatest book ; from office- 
boy to judge, here are all who walk in " the 



CHARACTERIZATION 125 

valley of the Shadow of the Law." Impossible 
to run through the list, much as one would enjoy 
it. Think only of Mr. Vholes. In the whole 
range of fiction there is no character more 
vivid than this ; exhibited so briefly yet so 
completely, with such rightness in every touch, 
such impressiveness of total effect, that the 
thing becomes a miracle. No strain of im- 
probable intrigue can threaten the vitality of 
these dusty figures. The clerks are as much 
alive as their employers ; the law-stationer 
stands for ever face to face with Mr. Tulking- 
horn ; Inspector Bucket has warmer flesh than 
that of any other detective in the library 
of detective literature. As for Jaggers and 
Wemmick, we should presume them unsur- 
passable had we not known their predecessors. 
They would make- a novelist's reputation. 

Among the finest examples of characteri- 
zation (I postpone a review of the figures 
which belong more distinctly to satire) must 
be mentioned the Father of the Marshalsea. 
Should ever proof be demanded — as often it 
has been — that Dickens is capable of high 
comedy, let it be sought in the 31st chapter 
of Book I. o{ Little Dorrit, There will be seen 
the old Marshalsea prisoner, the bankrupt of 
half a lifetime, entertaining and patronizing his 
workhouse pensioner, old Mr. Nandy. For 



126 CHARLES DICKENS 

delicacy of treatment, for fineness of observa- 
tion, this scene, I am inclined to think, is un- 
equalled in all the novels. Of exaggeration 
there is no trace; nothing raises a laugh; at 
most one smiles, and may very likely be kept 
grave by profound interest and a certain emo- 
tion of wonder. We are in a debtors' prison, 
among vulgar folk ; yet the exquisite finish of 
this study of human nature forbids one to 
judge it by any but the highest standards. 
The Dorrit brothers are both well drawn ; they 
are characterizations in the best sense of the 
word ; and in this scene we have the culmina- 
tion of the author's genius. That it reveals 
itself so quietly is but the final assurance of 
consummate power. 

With the normal in character, with what (all 
things considered) we may call wholesome 
normality, Dickens does not often concern 
himself Of course there are his homely- 
minded " little women," of whom more in an- 
other place. And there are his benevolent old 
boys (I call them so advisedly) whom one would 
like to be able to class with everyday people, 
but who cannot in strictness be considered here. 
Walking-gentlemen appear often enough ; ami- 
able shadows, such as Tom Pinch's friend 
Westlock; figures meant to be prominent, 
such as Arthur Clennam. There remain a few 



CHARACTERIZATION 1 27 

instances of genuine characterization within 
ordinary limits. I cannot fall in with the com- 
mon judgment that Dickens never shows us a 
gentleman. Twice, certainly, he has done so, 
with the interesting distinction that in one case 
he depicts a gentleman of the old school ; in 
the other, a representative of the refined man- 
hood which came into existence (or became 
commonly observable) in his latter years. In 
John Jarndyce I can detect no vulgarity ; he 
appears to me compact of good sense, honour, 
and gentle feeling. His eccentricity does not 
pass bounds ; the better we know him the less 
observable it grows. Though we are told 
nothing expressly of his intellectual acquire- 
ments, it is plain that he had a liberal education, 
and that his tastes are studious. Impossible 
not to like and to respect Mr. Jarndyce. Com- 
pare him with Mr. Pickwick, or with the 
Cheerybles, and we see at once the author*s 
intention of social superiority, no less than his 
increased skill in portraiture. The second 
figure, belonging to a changed time, is Mr. 
Crisparkle, for whose sake especially one 
regrets the unfinished state of Edwin Drood, 
His breezy manner, his athletic habits, his 
pleasant speech, give no bad idea of the classi- 
cal tutor who is neither an upstart nor a pedant. 
Dickens was careful in his choice of names ; 



128 CHARLES DICKENS 

we see how he formed that of Crisparkle, and 
recognize its fitness. 

Two other names occur to me, which carry 
with them a suggestion of true gentility — if 
the word is permitted; but their bearers can 
hardly rank with normal personages. Sir 
Leicester Dedlock, though by no means un- 
sympatheticaily presented, belongs rather to the 
region of satire ; he is a gentleman, indeed, and 
meant to be representative of a class, but his 
special characteristic overcharges the portrait. 
Incomparably more of a human being than 
his wife, he might, with less satirical emphasis, 
have been a very true gentleman indeed. 
Then, in Dombey and Son, does one not remem- 
ber Cousin Feenix? The name, this time, is 
unfortunate ; this weak-legged scion of aristoc- 
racy deserved better treatment. For he is no 
phantasm ; has no part with the puppets of 
supposed high-birth whom Dickens occasionally 
set up only for the pleasure of knocking them 
down again. However incapable of walking 
straight across a room, however restricted in 
his views of life. Cousin Feenix has the instincts 
of birth and breeding. I think one may say 
that he is Dickens's least disputable success in a 
sketch (it is only a sketch) from the aristocratic 
world. His talk does not seem to me ex- 
aggerated, and it is unusually interesting ; his 



CHARACTERIZATION 1 29 

heart is right, his apprehensions are delicate. 
That he should be shown as feeble in mind, no 
less than at the knees, is merely part of the 
author's scheme ; and, after all, the feebleness 
is more apparent than real. Dickens, moreover, 
very often associates kindness of disposition 
with lack of brains ; it connects itself, I fancy, 
with his attitude towards liberal education, 
which has already been discussed, as well as with 
his Radicalism, still to be spoken of. No dis- 
tinctly intellectual person figures in his books ; 
David Copperfield is only a seeming exception, 
for who really thinks of David as a literary 
man ? To his autobiography let all praise be 
given — with the reserve that we see the man 
himself less clearly than any other person of 
whom he speaks. Decidedly he is not " the 
hero of his own story." Had Dickens intended 
to show us a man of letters, he would here have 
failed most grievously ; of course he aimed at 
no such thing ; the attempt would have cost 
him half his public. And so it is that 
one never thinks of the good David as a 
character at all, never for a moment credits 
him, the long-suffering youth for whom Dora 
" held the pens,'* with that glorious endow- 
ment of genius which went to the writing of 
his life. 

Of an average middle-class family in Dick- 
9 



I30 CHARLES DICKENS 

ens's earlier time — decent, kindly, not unin- 
telligent folk — we have the best example in 
the M eagles group, from Little Dorrit. This 
household may be contrasted with, say, that 
of the May lies in Oliver Twist, which is 
merely immature work, and with the more 
familiar family circles on which Dickens lav- 
ishes his mirth and his benevolence. The 
Meagles do not much interest us, which is 
quite right ; they are thoroughly realized, and 
take their place in social history. Well done, 
too, is the Pocket family in Great Expectations, 
an interesting pendant to that of the Jellybys 
in Bleak House ; showing how well, when he 
chose, Dickens could satirize without extrava- 
gance. Mrs. Pocket is decidedly more credi- 
ble than Mrs. Jellyby ; it might be urged, 
perhaps, that she belongs to the Sixties instead 
of to the Fifties, a point of some importance. 
The likeness in dissimilitude between these 
ladies* husbands is very instructive. As for 
the son, Herbert Pocket, he is a capital speci- 
men of the healthy, right-minded, and fairly- 
educated middle-class youth. Very skilfully 
indeed is he placed side by side with Pip ; each 
throwing into relief the other's natural and 
acquired characteristics. We see how long 
it will take the blacksmith's foster-child (he 
telling the tale himselr) to reach the point of 



CHARACTERIZATION 13 1 

mental and moral refinement to which Herbert 
Pocket has been bred. 

One more illustration of the ordinary in life 
and character. Evidently Dickens took much 
pains with Walter Gay, in Bombey and Son, 
meaning to represent an average middle-class 
boy, high-spirited, frank, affectionate, and full 
of cheerful ambition. I have already men- 
tioned the darker design, so quickly aban- 
doned ; we feel sure its working out would not 
have carried conviction, for Walter Gay, from 
the first, does not ring quite true. The note 
seems forced ; we are not stirred by his exu- 
berance of jollity, and he never for a moment 
awakens strong interest. Is it any better with 
Richard Carstone, — in whom the tragic idea 
was, with modification, carried through ? Yes, 
Richard is more Interesting; by necessity of 
his fortunes, and by virtue of artistic effort. 
He has his place in a book pervaded with the 
atmosphere of doom. Vivid he never becomes ; 
we see him as a passive victim of fate, rather 
than as a struggling man ; if he made a better 
fight, or if we were allowed to see more 
of his human weakness (partly forbidden by 
our proprieties), his destiny would affect us 
more than it does. In truth, this kind of 
thing cannot be done under Dickens*s restric- 
tions. Thackeray could have done it magni- 



132 CHARLES DICKENS 

ficently ; but there was " the great, big, stupid 
public." 

The " gentleman " Dickens loved to con- 
template was — in echo of Burns's phrase — 
he who derives his patent of gentility straight 
from Almighty God. These he found abun- 
dantly among the humble of estate, the poor 
in spirit ; or indulged his fine humanity in the 
belief that they abounded. A broken squire, 
reduced to miserly service, but keeping through 
all faults and misfortunes the better part of his 
honest and kindly nature ; grotesque in per- 
son, of fantastic demeanour, but always lov- 
able ; — of this dream comes Newman Noggs. 
A city clerk, grey in conscientious labour for 
one house, glorying in the perfection of his 
ledger, taking it ill if his employers insist on 
raising his salary; — the vision is christened 
Tim Linkinwater. A young man of bump- 
kinish appearance, shy, ungainly, who has 
somehow drifted into the household of a 
country architect ; who nourishes his soul at 
the church organ ; who is so good and simple 
and reverential that years of experience cannot 
teach him what everyone else sees at a glance 
— the hypocritical rascality of his master ; he 
takes shape, and is known to us as Tom Pinch. 
A village blacksmith, with heart as tender as 
his thews are tough ; delighting above all things 



CHARACTERIZATION 133 

in the society of a little child ; so dull of brain 
that he gives up in despair the effort to learn 
his alphabet ; so sweet of temper that he en- 
dures in silence the nagging of an outrageous 
wife ; so delicate of sensibility that he per- 
spires at the thought of seeming to intrude 
upon an old friend risen in life ; — what name 
can be his but Joe Gargery ? These, and 
many another Hke unto them, did the master 
lovingly create, and there would be something 
of sacrilege in a cold scrutiny of his work. 
Whether or no their prototypes existed in the 
hurrying crowd of English life, which obscures 
so much good as well as evil, these figures 
have fixed themselves in the English imagi- 
nation, and their names are part of our lan- 
guage. Dickens saw them, and heard them 
speak; to us, when we choose to enjoy with- 
out criticizing, they seem no less present. 
Every such creation was a good deed ; the 
results for good have been incalculable. Would 
he have been better occupied, had he pried 
into each character, revealed its vices, insisted 
on its sordid weaknesses, thrown bare its fre- 
quent hypocrisy, and emphasized its dreary 
unintelligence ? Indeed, I think not. I will 
only permit myself the regret that he who 
could come so near to truth, and yet so move 
the affections, as in Joe Gargery, was at other 



134 CHARLES DICKENS 

times content with that inferior ideahsm which 
addresses itself only to unripe minds or to 
transitory moods. 

The point to be kept in view regarding 
these ideal figures is that, however little their 
speech or conduct may smack of earth, their 
worldly surroundings are shown with marvellous 
fidelity. Tom Pinch worshipping at the shrine 
of Pecksniff may not hold our attention ; but 
Tom Pinch walking towards Salisbury on the 
frosty road, or going to market in London 
with his sister, is unforgettable. This is what 
makes the difference between an impossible 
person in Dickens and the same kind of vision 
in the work of smaller writers. One cannot 
repeat too often that, in our literary slang, he 
" visualized " every character — Little Nell no 
less than Mr. Jaggers. Seeing them^ he saw 
the house in which they lived, the table at 
which they ate, and all the little habits of their 
day-to-day life. Here is an invaluable method 
of illusion, if an author can adopt it. Thus 
fortified, Dickens's least substantial imaginings 
have a durability not to be hoped for the 
laborious accuracies of an artist uninspired. 

Pass to another group in this scarcely ex- 
haustible world — the confessed eccentrics. 
Here Dickens revels. An English novelist 
must needs be occupied to some extent with 



CHARACTERIZATION 135 

grotesque abnormalities of thought and demean- 
our. Dickens saw them about him even more 
commonly than we of to-day, and delighted 
in noting, selecting, combining. The result is 
seen in those persons of his drama who are 
frankly given up by many who will defend his 
verisimilitude in other directions. Mantalini, 
for example ; Quilp, Captain Cuttle, Silas 
Wegg, and many another. For Silas Wegg, I 
fear, nothing can be urged, save the trifle that 
we know him ; he becomes a bore, one of the 
worst instances of this form of humour weak- 
ened by extenuation. Even Dickens occasion- 
ally suffered from the necessity of filHng a 
certain space. Think how long his novels 
are, and marvel that the difficulty does not 
more often declare itself Of Mr. Boythorne 
we are accustomed to think as drawn from 
Landor, but then it is Landor with all the in- 
tellect left out; his roaring as gently as any 
sucking-dove does not greatly charm us, but 
his talk has good qualities. More of a charac- 
ter, in the proper sense of the word, is Harold 
Skimpole, whose portrait gave such offence to 
Leigh Hunt. Now Skimpole is one of the 
few people in Dickens whom we dislike, and 
so, a priori^ demands attention. If we incline 
to think his eccentricity overdone, be it re- 
membered that the man was in part an actor, 



136 CHARLES DICKENS 

and a very clever actor too. Skimpole is 
excellent work, and stands with fine indi- 
viduality among the representatives of true 
unworldliness. 

To which category belongs Mr. Micawber ? 
The art of living without an income may be 
successfully cultivated in very different moods. 
It is possible for a man of the most generous 
instincts to achieve great things in this line of 
endeavour ; but the fact remains that, sooner 
or later, somebody has the honour of discharg- 
ing his liabilities. To speak severely of Mr. 
Micawber is beyond the power of the most 
conscientious critic, whether in life or art ; the 
most rigid economist would be glad to grasp 
him by the hand and to pay for the bowl of 
punch over which this type of genial impecu- 
niosity would dilate upon his embarrassments 
and his hopes ; the least compromising realist 
has but to open at a dialogue or a letter in 
which Mr. Micawber's name is seen, and 
straightway he forgets his theories. No selfish 
intention can be attributed to him. His bill 
might not be provided for when he declared it 
was^ and, in consequence, poor Traddles may 
lose the table he has purchased for " the dear- 
est girl in the world,'* but Mr. Micawber had 
all the time been firmly assured that something 
would turn up ; he will sympathize profoundly 



CHARACTERIZATION 137 

with Traddles, and write him an epistle which 
makes amends for the loss of many tables. 
No man ever lived who was so consistently- 
delightful — certainly Dickens's father cannot 
have been so, but in this idealized portraiture 
we have essential truth. Men of this stamp 
do not abound, but they are met with, even 
to-day. As a rule, he who waits for something 
to turn up, mixing punch the while, does so 
with a very keen eye on his neighbour's 
pocket, and is recommended to us neither by 
Skimpole's fantastic gaiety nor by Micawber's 
eloquence and warmth of heart ; nevertheless, 
one knows the irrepressibly hopeful man, full of 
kindliness, often distinguished by unconscious 
affectations of speech, who goes through life 
an unreluctant pensioner on the friends won 
by his many good ^and genial qualities. The 
one point on which experience gives no sup- 
port to the imaginative figure is his conversion 
to practical activity. Mr. Micawber in Aus- 
tralia does the heart good ; but he is a pious 
vision. We refuse to think of a wife worn out 
by anxieties, of children growing up in squalor ; 
we gladly accept the flourishing colonist ; but 
this is tribute to the author whom we love. 
Dickens never wrought more successfully for 
our pleasure and for his own fame. He is 
ever at his best when dealing with an amiable 



138 CHARLES DICKENS 

weakness. And in Micawber he gives us no 
purely national type — such men are pecuHar 
to no country; all the characteristics of this 
wonderful picture can be appreciated by civi- 
lized readers throughout the world. It is not 
so in regard to many of his creations, though 
all the finest have traits of universal humanity. 
Should time deal hardly with him ; should his 
emphasis of time and place begin to weigh 
against his wide acceptance; it is difficult to 
believe that the beaming visage of Wilkins 
Micawber will not continue to be recognized 
wherever men care for literary art. 

This chapter must conclude with a glance 
at a class of human beings prominent in 
Dickens's earlier books, but of small artistic 
interest when treated in the manner peculiar 
to him. He was fond of characters hovering 
between eccentricity and madness, and in one 
case he depicted what he himself calls an idiot, 
though idiocy is not, strictly speaking, the form 
of disease exhibited. Lunatics were more often 
found at large in his day than in ours ; perhaps 
that accounts for our introduction to such per- 
sons as Mrs. Nickleby's wooer and Mr. Dick ; 
Miss Elite, of course, had another significance. 
The crazy gentleman on the garden walk, who 
at once flatters and terrifies Mrs. Nickleby, 
can hardly be regarded as anything but an 



CHARACTERIZATION 



^39 



actor in broad farce ; his talk, indeed, is mid- 
summer madness, but is meant only to raise 
a laugh. At the end of the century, one does 
not laugh with such agreeable facility. Mrs. 
Nickleby commands our attention — at a re- 
spectful distance; and here, as always, behaves 
after her kind, illustrating the eternal feminine ; 
but the madman we cannot accept. Betsy 
Trotwood's protege comes nearer to the recog- 
nizable ; nevertheless Mr. Dick^s presence in 
such a book as David Copperfield would seem 
waste of space, but for certain considerations. 
He illustrates the formidable lady's goodness 
and common-sense ; he served a very practical 
purpose, that of recommending rational treat- 
ment of the insane ; and he had his place in 
the pages of an author whose humanity in- 
cludes all that are in any way afflicted, in mind, 
body, or estate. Moreover, the craze about 
King Charles's head has been, and is likely 
to be, a great resource to literary persons in 
search of a familiar allusion. In passing to 
Barnaby Rudge^ we are on different ground. 
Whatever else, Barnaby is a very picturesque 
figure, and I presume it was merely on this 
account that Dickens selected such a hero. In 
an earlier chapter, I said that this story seemed 
to me to bear traces of the influence of Scott ; 
its narrative style and certain dialogues in the 



I40 CHARLES DICKENS 

historical part are suggestive of this. May 
not the crazy Barnaby have originated in a 
recollection of Madge Wildfire ? Crazy, I call 
him ; an idiot he certainly is not. An idiot 
does not live a life of exalted imagination. 
But certain lunatics are of imagination all com- 
pact, and Barnaby, poetically speaking, makes 
a good representative of the class. Of psy- 
chology — a word unknown to Dickens — we, 
of course, have nothing ; to ask for it is out of 
place. The idea, all things considered, cannot 
be judged a happy one. Whilst writing the 
latter part of the book Dickens thought for a 
moment of showing the rioters as led by a 
commanding figure, who, in the end, should 
prove to have escaped from Bedlam. We see 
his motive for this, but are not sorry he aban- 
doned the idea. Probably Barnaby RudgCy 
good as it is, would have been still better had 
the suggestion of an insane central figure been 
also discarded. 



CHAPTER VI 

SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 

Not only does Dickens give poetic shape to 
the better characteristics of English life ; he is 
also England's satirist. Often directed against 
i, buses in their nature temporary, his satire 
has in some part lost its edge, and would have 
only historic interest but for the great preser- 
vative, humour, mingled with all his books ; 
much of it, however, is of enduring signifi- 
cance, and reminds us that the graver faults of 
Englishmen are not to be overcome by a few 
years of popular education, by general increase 
of comfort and refinement, by the spread of a 
genuinely democratic spirit. Some of these 
blemishes, it is true, belong more or less to all 
mankind ; but in Dickens's England they were 
peculiarly disfiguring, and the worst of them 
seem inseparable from the national character. 

Much as they loved and glorified him, his 
countrymen did not fail to make protest when 
wounded by the force of his satiric portraiture. 
The cry was " exaggeration." As one might 



142 CHARLES DICKENS 

surmise, this protest was especially vigorous 
during the publication of Martin Chuzzlewit^ 
in v/hich book the English vice par excellence 
gets its deserts. Dickens used the opportunity 
of a preface to answer his critics ; he remarked 
that peculiarities of character often escape ob- 
servation until they are directly pointed out, 
and asked whether the charge of exaggeration 
brought against him might not simply mean 
that he, a professed student of life, saw more 
than ordinary people. There was undoubted 
truth in the plea ; Browning has put the same 
thought — as an apology for art — into the 
mouth of Fra Lippo Lippi. Dickens assur- 
edly saw a great deal more in every day of 
his life than his average readers in three score 
years and ten. But it still remained a question 
whether, in his desire to stigmatize an objection- 
able peculiarity, the satirist had not erred by 
making this peculiarity the whole man. Exag- 
geration there was, beyond dispute, in such a 
picture as that of Pecksniff; inasmuch as no 
man can be so consistently illustrative of an 
evil habit of mind. There was lack of propor- 
tion ; the figure failed in human symmetry. 
Just as, in the same book, the pictures of 
American life erred through one-sidedness. 
Dickens had written satire, and satire as 
pointed, as effective, as any in literature. Let 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 143 

the galled jade wince ; there was an outcry of 
many voices, appealing to common judgment. 
It might be noted that these same sensitive 
critics had never objected to " exaggeration " 
when the point at issue was merely one of art ; 
they became aware of their favourite author's 
defect only when it involved a question of 
morals or of national character. 

Merely as satirist, however, Dickens never for 
a moment endangered his popularity. The fact, 
already noticed, that Martin Chuzzlewit found 
fewer admirers than the books preceding it, had 
nothing to do with its moral theme, but must 
be traced to causes, generally more or less 
vague, such as from time to time affect the re- 
ception of every author's work ; not long after 
its completion, this book became one of the 
most widely read. There is the satire which 
leaves cold, or alienates, the ordinary man, 
either because it passes above his head, or con- 
flicts with his cherished prejudices ; and there 
is the satire which, by appealing to his better 
self, — that is, to a standard of morality which 
he theoretically, or in very deed, accepts, — 
commands his sympathy as soon as he sees his 
drift. What is called the " popular conscience '' 
was on Dickens's side ; and he had the im- 
mense advantage of being able to raise a hearty 
laugh even whilst pointing his lesson. Among 



144 CHARLES DICKENS 

the rarest of things is this thorough understand- 
ing between author and public, permitting a 
man of genius to say aloud with impunity that 
which all his hearers say within themselves 
dumbly, inarticulately. Dickens never went 
too far; never struck at a genuine conviction 
of the multitude. Let us imagine him, in some 
moment of aberration, suggesting criticism of 
the popular idea of sexual morality ! Would 
it have availed him that he had done the state 
some service ? Would argument or authority 
have helped for one moment to win him a 
patient hearing ? We know that he never de- 
sired to provoke such antagonism. Broadly 
speaking, he was one wath his readers, and 
therein lay his strength for reform. 

As for the charge of exaggeration, the truth 
is that Dickens exaggerated no whit more in his 
satire than in his sympathetic portraiture. It 
is an idle objection. Of course he exaggerated, 
in all but every page. In the last chapter I 
pointed to exceptional instances of literal or 
subdued truthfulness ; not by these did he 
achieve his triumphs ; they lurk for discovery 
by the curious. Granting his idealistic method, 
such censure falls wide of the mark. We are 
struck more forcibly when a character is ex- 
hibited as compact of knavery or grotesque 
cruelty, than when it presents incarnate good- 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 145 

ness ; that is all. The one question we are 
justified in urging is, whether his characteriza- 
tion is consistent with itself. In the great 
majority of cases, I believe the answer must be 
affirmative. Were it not so, Dickens^s reputa- 
tion would by this time linger only among the 
untaught; among those who are content to 
laugh, no matter how the mirth be raised. 

His satire covers a great part of English 
life, public and private. Education, charity, 
religion, social morality in its broadest sense, 
society in its narrowest ; legal procedure, the 
machinery of politics and the forms of govern- 
ment. Licensed to speak his mind, he aims 
laughingly or sternly, but always in the same 
admirable spirit, at every glaring abuse of the 
day. He devotes a whole book, a prodigy of 
skilful labour, to that crowning example of the 
law's delay, which had wrought ruin in in- 
numerable homes; he throws off a brilliant 
little sketch, in a Christmas number, and 
makes everybody laugh at the absurd defects 
of railway refreshment rooms. We marvel at 
such breadth of tireless observation in the 
service of human welfare. Impossible to follow 
him through all the achievements of his satire ; 
I can but select examples in each field, pro- 
ceeding in the order just indicated. 

It is natural that he should turn, at the be- 
10 



146 CHARLES DICKENS 

ginning of his career, to abuses evident in the 
parish, the school, the place of worship. These 
were nearest at hand ; they stared at him in his 
observant childhood, and during his life as a 
journalist. Consequently we soon meet with 
Mr. Bumble, with Mr. Squeers, with the Rev. 
Mr. Stiggins. Of these three figures, the one 
most open to the charge of exaggeration is the 
Yorkshire schoolmaster ; yet who shall declare 
with assurance that Squeers's brutality outdoes 
the probable in his place and generation ? 
There is crude workmanship in the portrait, 
and still more in the picture of Dotheboys, 
where overcharging defeats its own end. The 
extraordinary feature of this bit of work is the 
inextricable blending of horrors and jocosity. 
Later, when Dickens had fuller command of 
his resources, he would have made Dotheboys 
very much more impressive ; it remains an 
illustration of superabundant spirits in a man 
of genius. We can hardly help an amiable 
feeling towards the Squeers family, seeing the 
hearty gusto with which they pursue their 
monstrous business. The children who suffer 
under them are so shadowy that we cannot feel 
the wrong as we ought ; such a spectacle should 
lay waste the heart, and yet we continue smil- 
ing. Dickens, of course, did not intend that 
this gathering of martyred children should have 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 147 

the effect of reality. Enough if he called at- 
tention to the existence of a horror ; reflection 
shall come afterwards ; his immediate business 
is story-telling, that is to say, amusement. 
Wonderfully did he adapt means to ends ; we 
find, in fact, that nothing could have been 
practically more effectual than this exhibition of 
strange gaiety. Mr. Bumble, though he comes 
earlier, is, in truth, better work than Squeers. 
Read carefully chapter iv. of Oliver Twist, and 
you will discover, probably to your surprise, 
that the " porochial " functionary is, after all, 
human: in one line — in a delicate touch — 
we are shown Bumble softened, to the point of 
a brief silence, by Oliver's pleading for kind 
usage. No such moment occurs in the history 
of Squeers. And we see why not. The master 
of Dotheboys is not meant for a conscientious 
study of a human being ; he is the represen- 
tative, pr.re and simple, of a vile institution. 
Admit a lurking humanity, and we have sug- 
gestion of possible reform. Now the parochial 
system, bad as it was, seemed a necessity, and 
only needed a thorough overhauling, — observe 
the perfectly human behaviour of certain of the 
guardians before whom Oliver appears ; but 
with the Yorkshire schools, it was root and 
branch, they must be swept from the earth. 
I do not think this is refining overmuch. 



148 CHARLES DICKENS 

Dickens's genius declared itself so consistently 
in his adaptation of literary means to ends of 
various kinds ; and, however immature the 
details of his performance, he shows from the 
first this marvellous precision in effect. 

Dotheboys was of course, even in these 
bad times, an exceptional method for the rear- 
ing of youth. It is not cold-blooded cruelty, 
but blockheaded ignorance, against which 
Dickens has to fight over the whole ground 
of education. We have noticed his attitude 
towards the system of classical training; the 
genteel private schools of his day invited 
satire, and supplied him with some of his 
most entertaining chapters. Dr. Blimber*s es- 
tablishment is a favourable specimen of the 
kind of thing that satisfied well-to-do parents ; 
genial ridicule suffices for its condemnation. 
But Dickens went deeper and laid stress upon 
the initial stages of the absurd system. Mrs. 
Pipchin, however distinct a personality, was 
not singular in her mode of dealing with 
children fresh from the nursery. Always 
profoundly interested in these little people, 
Dickens, without reaching any very clear 
conception of reform, well understood the evil 
consequences of such gross neglect or mis- 
taken zeal as were common in households 
of every class. He knew that the vices of 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 149 

society could for the most part be traced to 
these bad beginnings. A leader in this as in 
so many other directions, he taught his readers 
to think much of children just at the time 
when England had especial need of an edu- 
cational awakening. Not his satire alone, but 
his so-called sentimentality, served a great 
purpose, and the death-bed of Paul Dombey, 
no less than the sufferings of Mr. Creakle's 
little victim, helped on the better day. 

Though it has been " proved to demon- 
stration " — by persons who care for such 
proof — that tenderness of heart led him 
astray in his bitterness against the new Poor 
Law, we see, of course, that herein he pursued 
his humane task, seeking in all possible ways 
to mitigate the harshness of institutions which 
pressed hardly upon the poor and weak. He 
could not away with those who held — or 
spoke as if they held — that a man had no 
duty to his fellows beyond the strict letter of 
the law. In this respect that very poor book. 
Hard Times, has noteworthy significance ; but 
the figures of Gradgrind and Bounderby show 
how completely he could fail when he dis- 
pensed (or all but dispensed) with the aid of 
humour. Oliver Twist's "old gentleman in 
the white waistcoat" is decidedly better as 
portraiture, and as satire more effective. Apol- 



I50 CHARLES DICKENS 

oglsts, or rampant glorifiers, of the workhouse, 
such as appear in the Christmas Books, need 
not be viewed too seriously ; they stood forth 
at a season of none too refined joviality, and 
were in keeping wath barons of beef, tons of 
plum-pudding, and other such heavy extrav- 
agances. They do not live in one's mind ; 
nor, I think, does any of Dickens's persons 
mean to satirize poor-law abuses. In this 
matter, his spirit did its work, his art not 
greatly assisting. 

But when we come to his lashings of reli- 
gious hypocrisy, the figures castigated are sub- 
stantial enough. Alv/ays delighted to represent 
a humbug, Dickens can scarce restrain him- 
self when he gets hold of a religious hum- 
bug, especially of the coarse type. Brother 
Stiggins shines immortal in the same pages 
with Mr. Pickwick and the Wellers. Compare 
with him the Reverend Mr. Chadband. They 
are the same men, but one lived in 1837, ^^^ 
other in 1853. Brother Stiggins is, in plain 
English, a drunkard ; Mr. Chadband would 
think shame of himself to be even once over- 
taken : he is a consumer of tea and muffins. It 
suited the author's mood, and the day in which 
he was writing, to have Mr. Stiggins soundly 
beaten in a pugilistic encounter with Tony 
Weller, to say nothing of other undignified 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 151 

positions in which the reverend gentleman finds 
himself; but Mr. Chadband may discourse 
upon " Terewth " in Mr. Snagsby's parlour to 
any length that pleases him with no fear of 
such outrage. These same discourses are 
among the most mirth-provoking things in all 
Dickens: impossible to regard with nothing 
but contempt or dislike the man who has so 
shaken our sides. It might be well for the 
world if the race of Chadband should disappear 
(a consummation still far out of sight) ; but the 
satirist frankly glories in him, and to us he is a 
joy for ever. This is the best of the full-length 
pictures ; but we have many a glimpse of kin- 
dred personages, always shown us with infinite 
gusto. The Rev. Melchisedech Howler, for 
instance. With what extravagance of humour, 
with what a rapture of robust mirth, are his 
characteristics touched off in a short passage of 
Dombey and Son. I must give myself the plea- 
sure of copying it. " The Rev. Melchisedech 
Howler, who, having been one day discharged 
from the West India Docks on a false suspi- 
cion (got up expressly against him by the gen- 
eral enemy) of screwing gimlets into puncheons, 
and applying his lips to the orifice, had an- 
nounced the destruction of the world for that 
day two years, at ten in the morning, and 
opened a front parlour for the reception of 



152 CHARLES DICKENS 

ladies and gentlemen, of the ranting persuasion, 
upon whom, on the first occasion of their assem- 
blage, the admonition of the Rev. Melchisedech 
had produced so powerful an effect, that, in 
their rapturous performance of a sacred jig, 
which closed the service, the whole flock broke 
through into a kitchen below and disabled a 
mangle belonging to one of the fold'* (chap. 
XV.). There is something of sheer boyishness 
in this irresistible glee ; yet the passage was 
written more than ten years after Pickwick. It 
is the same all but to the end. Dickens treats 
a thoroughgoing humbug as though he loved 
him. Reverent of all true religion, and in- 
clined to bitterness against respectable short- 
comings in the high places of the church, he 
goes wild with merriment over back-parlour 
proselytism and the brayings of Little Bethel. 
Perhaps in this respect alone did he give grave 
and lasting offence to numbers of people who 
would otherwise have been amongst his ad- 
mirers. At a later time, he could draw, or 
attempt, a sympathetic portrait of a clergyman 
of the Established Church, in Our Mutual 
Friend, and, in his last book, could speak re- 
spectfully of Canons ; but with Dissent he 
never reconciled himself To this day, I 
believe, his books are excluded, on religious 
grounds, from certain families holding austere 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 153 

views. Remembering the England he sets 
before us, it is perhaps the highest testimony 
to his power that such hostility did not make 
itself more felt when he was mocking so light- 
heartedly at Stiggins and Chadband and the 
Rev. Melchisedech. 

Connected with hypocrisy in religion, but 
very skilfully kept apart from it, is his finest 
satiric portrait, that of Mr. Pecksniff. Think 
of all that is suggested in this representative 
of an odious vice, and marvel at the adroit- 
ness with which a hundred pitfalls of the 
incautious satirist are successfully avoided. A 
moral hypocrite, an incarnation of middle-class 
respectability in the worst sense of the word, 
in the sense so loathed by Carlyle, and by every 
other man of brains then living; yet never a 
hint at subjects for^bidden in the family circle, 
never a word to which that relative of Mr. 
Pecksniff, the famous Podsnap, could possibly 
object. The thing would seem impossible, 
but that it is done. Let the understanding 
read between the lines ; as in all great art, 
much is implied that finds no direct expression. 
Mr. Pecksniff walks and talks before us, a 
cause of hilarity to old and young, yet the type 
of as ugly a failing as any class or people can 
be afflicted withal. The book in which he 
figures is directed against self-interest in all its 



154 CHARLES DICKENS 

forms. We see the sagacious swindler, and 
the greedy dupe whose unscrupulousness ends 
in murder. We see the flocking of the Chuz- 
zlewit family, like birds of prey, about the 
sick-bed of their wealthy relative ; and among 
them the gentlemanly architect of unctuous 
phrase, who hearing himself called a hypocrite 
signalizes his pre-eminence in an immortal 
remark. " Charity, my dear, when I take 
my chamber-candlestick to-night, remind me 
to be more than usually particular in praying 
for Mr. Anthony Chuzzlewit, who has done 
me an injustice." This man is another than 
Tartuffe ; he belongs to a different age, and 
difl:erent country. His religion is not an end 
in itself; he does not desire to be thought a 
saint; his prayers are inseparable from the 
chamber-candlestick, a mere item in the char- 
acter of British respectability. A like subor- 
dination appears in the piety of all Dickens's 
religious pretenders ; their language never be- 
comes offensive to the ordinary reader, simply 
because it avoids the use of sacred names and 
phrases, and is seen to have a purely temporal 
application. Mr. Chadband is a tradesman, 
dealing in a species of exhortation which his 
hearers have agreed to call spiritual, and to 
rate at a certain value in coin of the realm ; 
religion in its true sense never comes into 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 155 

question. Mr. Pecksniff, of course, might 
have become a shining light in some great con- 
venticle, but destiny has made him a layman ; 
he published his habit of praying, because to 
pray (over the chamber-candlestick) was incum- 
bent upon an Englishman who had a position 
to support, who had a stake in the country. 
A reputation for piety, however, would not 
"^uffice to his self-respect, and to the needs of 
business ; he adds an all-embracing benevo- 
ence, his smile falls like the blessed sunshine 
on all who meet him in his daily walk. This 
it is which so impresses the simple-minded 
Tom Pinch. Tom, a thorough Englishman 
for all his virtues, would not be attracted by a 
show of merely religious exaltation ; faith must 
be translated into works. Pecksniff must seem 
to him good, kind, generous, a great man at 
his profession, sound and trustworthy in all 
he undertakes. In other words, the Pecksniff 
whom Tom believes in is the type of English 
excellence, and evidently no bad type to be 
set before a nation. Such men existed, and 
do, and will ; we talk little about them, and it 
is their last desire that we should ; they live, 
mostly in silence, for the honour of their race 
and of humankind. But, since the Puritan 
revolution, it has unhappily seemed necessary 
to our countrymen in general to profess in a 



156 CHARLES DICKENS 

peculiar way certain peculiar forms of godliness, 
and this habit, gradually associated with social 
prejudices arising from high prosperity, results 
in the respectable man. Analyzing this per- 
son down to his elements, Carlyle found it an 
essential, if not the essential, that he should 
" keep a gig." If my memory serves me, Mr. 
Pecksniff did not keep a gig (possibly it is im- 
plied in his position), and, after all, the gig is 
but crudely symbolical. " Let us be moral," 
says the great man (happening at that moment 
to be drunk), and here we get to the honest 
root of the matter. Though the Englishman 
may dispense with a gig, and remain respectable, 
he must not be suspected of immorality. " Let 
us contemplate existence," pursues the inebriate 
sage. We do so, we English, and find that 
the term morality (more decidedly than reli- 
gion) includes all that, in our souls, we rate 
most highly. According to his proved mo- 
rality (sexual first and foremost), do we put 
trust in a man. We are a practical people ; 
we point to our wealth in evidence ; and our 
experience has set it beyond doubt that chastity 
of thought and act is a nation's prime safe- 
guard. 

Could we but be satisfied with the con- 
viction, and simply act upon it ! It is not 
enough. We must hold it as an article of 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 157 

faith that respectability not only does not err, 
but knows not temptation. A poet who never 
asked to be thought respectable, has put into 
words we shall not easily forget, his thought 
about immorality : — 

** I waive the danger of the sin, 
The hazard of concealing. 
But oh! it hardens all within. 
And petrifies the feeling! " 

The danger of the sin is so grave, the hazard 
of concealing so momentous, in English eyes, 
that we form a national conspiracy to exhibit 
English nature as distinct, in several points, 
from the merely human. Hence a character- 
istic delicacy, a singular refinement, contrasting 
with the manners, say, of the Latin races, and, 
at its best, resulting in very sweet and noble 
lives ; hence, also, that counterbalancing vice 
which would fain atone for vice in the more 
common sense of the word. Though all within 
may be hopelessly hardened, the feeling petri- 
fied into a little idol of egoism, outwardly 
there shall be a show of everything we re- 
spect. " Homage to virtue," quotha ? Well 
and good, were it nothing more. But Mr. 
Pecksniff takes up his parable, his innumer- 
able kindred hold forth in the market-place. 
Respectability cannot hold its tongue, in fact ; 



158 CHARLES DICKENS 

and the language it affects is wont to be 
nauseous. 

Lower than Pecksniff, but of obvious brother- 
hood with him, stands Uriah Heep. This ex- 
ample of a low-born man, who, chancing to 
have brains, deems it most expedient to use 
them for dishonest purposes, will not yield in 
the essentials of respectability to the best in 
the land. He is poor, he is 'umble, but his 
morals must not for a moment be doubted. 
The undisguisable fact of poverty is accepted 
and made the most of; it becomes his tower 
of strength. Mr. Pecksniff, conscious of a 
well-filled purse, assumes a certain modesty 
of demeanour — a foretaste, by the by, of that 
affectation in rich people which promises such 
an opportunity for satire in our own day. 
Uriah Heep wallows in perpetual humility ; 
he grovels before his social superiors, that he 
may prove to them his equality in soul. With 
regard to this slimy personage, we note at 
once that he is a victim of circumstances, the 
outcome of a bad education and of a society 
affected with disease. His like abounded at 
the time ; nowadays they will not so easily 
be discovered. The doctrine that " A man 's 
a man for a that " has taken solid shape, 
and our triumphant democracy will soon be 
ashamed of a motto so disparaging. But Heep 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 159 

saw no prospect when he stood upright; only 
when he crawled did a chance of issue from 
that too humble life present itself. " Remem- 
ber your place 1 " — from his earliest years this 
admonition had sounded for him. This prime 
duty is ever present to his mind ; it prompts 
him to avow, in and out of season, that he 
belongs to a very 'umble family, that he is 
himself the 'umblest of mortals. Meanwhile 
the man's vitals are consumed with envy, 
hatred, and malice. He cannot respect him- 
self; his training has made the thing impossi- 
ble ; and all men are his enemies. When he 
is detected in criminal proceedings, we are 
hard upon him, very hard. Dickens cannot 
relent to this victim of all that is worst in the 
society he criticizes. Had Uriah stopped short 
of crime, something might have been said for 
him, but the fellow is fatally logical. Logic 
of that kind we cannot hear of for a moment ; 
in our own logic of the police-court and the 
assizes we will take remarkably good care that 
there is no flaw. 

Pecksniff and Uriah have a certain amount 
of intellect. In his last book Dickens presents 
us with the monumental humbug who is at the 
same time an egregious fool. Mr. Sapsea very 
honestly worships himself; he is respectability 
weighing a good many stone, with heavy watch- 



i6o CHARLES DICKENS 

guard and expensive tailoring. By incessant 
lauding of his own virtues to a world always 
more or less attentive, when such a speaker 
carries social weight, Sapsea has developed a 
mania of self-importance. His thickness of 
hide, his stolidity, are well displayed, but it 
seems to me that in this case Dickens has been 
guilty of a piece of exaggeration altogether ex- 
ceeding the limits of art ; perhaps the one in- 
stance where his illusion fails to make us accept 
an extravagance even for a moment. I refer to 
Sapsea's inscription for his wife's tomb {Edwin 
Drood^ chap. iv.). Contrasting this with any- 
thing to be found in Pecksniff or Uriah Heep, 
we perceive the limits of his satire, strictly im- 
posed by art, even where he is commonly held 
to have been most fantastic. 

Dickens applied with extraordinary skill the 
only method which, granted all his genius, 
could have ensured him so vast a sway over the 
public of that time. His art, especially as 
satirist, lies in the judicious use of emphasis 
and reiteration. Emphasis alone would not 
have answered his purpose ; the striking thing 
must be said over and over again till the most 
stupid hearer has it by heart. We of to-day 
sometimes congratulate ourselves on an im- 
provement in the public taste and intelligence, 
and it is true that some popular authors 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE i6i 

conciliate their admirers by an appeal in a 
comparatively subdued note. But — who has 
a popularity like to that of Dickens ? Should 
there again rise an author to be compared with 
him in sincerity and universality of acceptance, 
once more will be heard that unmistakable 
voice of summons to Goodman Dull. We are 
educated, we are cultured ; be it so ; but, to 
say the least, some few millions of us turn with 
weariness from pages of concentrated art. 
Fifty years ago the people who did not might 
have been gathered from the English-speaking 
world into a London hall, without uncomfort- 
able crowding. Dickens well understood that 
he must cry aloud and spare not ; he did it 
naturally, as a man of his generation ; he, and 
his fellow reformers, educators, popular enter- 
tainers, were perforce vociferous to the half- 
awakened multitudes. Carlyle was even more 
emphatic, and reiterated throughout a much 
longer life. Education notwithstanding, these 
will be the characteristics of any writer for whom 
fate reserves a gigantic popularity in the century 
to come. 

Yes, it is quite true that Mr. Micawber, 
Mr. Pecksniff, Uriah Heep, and all Dickens's 
prominent creations say the same thing in the 
same way, over and over again. The literary 
exquisite is disgusted, the man of letters shakes 



i62 CHARLES DICKENS 

his head with a smile. Remember : for twenty 
months did these characters of favourite fiction 
make a periodical appearance, and not the most 
stupid man in England forgot them between 
one month and the next. The method is at 
the disposal of all and sundry ; who will use it 
to this effect ? 

In his satires on " high life/* Dickens was 
less successful than with the middle class. I 
have spoken of Sir Leicester Dedlock and 
Cousin Feenix, both well done, the latter 
especially, and characterizations worthy of the 
author, but they hold no place in the general 
memory. His earliest attempt at this kind of 
thing was unfortunate ; Lord Frederick Veri- 
sopht and Sir Mulberry Hawk are on a par 
with the literary lady in Pickwick^ who wrote 
the ode to an Expiring Frog — an exercise of 
fancy, which has no relation whatever to the 
facts of life. Possibly the young author of 
Nicholas Nickleby fancied he had drawn a typical 
baronet and a lord; more likely he worked 
with conscious reference to the theatre. In 
Little Dorrit we are introduced to certain high- 
born or highly-connected people, who make 
themselves deliberately offensive, but their 
names cannot be recalled. Much better is the 
study of an ancient worldling in Edith Dombey's 
mother, Mrs. Skewton. Her paralytic seizure. 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 163 

her death in life, are fine and grisly realism ; 
but we do not accept Mrs. Skewton as a typi- 
cal figure. Too obvious is the comparison 
with Thackeray's work ; Dickens is here at a 
grave disadvantage, and would have done 
better not to touch that ground at all. Per- 
haps the same must be said of his incursions 
into political satire ; and yet, one would be 
loth to lose the Circumlocution Office. Though 
by the choice of such a name he seems to for- 
bid our expecting any picture of reality, there 
seems reason to believe that those pages of 
Little Dorrit are not much less true than amus- 
ing ; at all events they are admirably written. 
Of the Barnacle family we accept readily enough 
the one who is described as bright and young ; 
indeed, this youngster is a good deal of a 
gentleman, and represents the surviving element 
of that day's civil service ; under a competitive 
system, he alone would have a chance. His 
relatives have significance enough, but very 
little life. Dickens wrote of them in anger, 
which was never the case in his satiric master- 
pieces. Anger abundantly justified, no doubt ; 
but at the same time another critic of the Eng- 
lish government was making heard his wrath- 
ful voice (it came from Chelsea), and with 
more of the true prophetic vehemence. Dick- 
ens did not feel at home in this Barnacle 



i64 CHARLES DICKENS 

atmosphere ; something of personal feeling 
entered into his description of its stifling 
properties. He could write brilliantly on the 
subject, but not with the calmness necessary for 
the creation of lasting characters. 

The upstarts of commerce and speculation 
came more within his scope. Montague Tigg 
keeps a place in one's recollection, but chiefly, 
I think, as the impecunious braggart rather 
than as the successful knave. There is an 
impressiveness about Mr. Merdle, but perhaps 
rather in the description of his surroundings 
than in the figure of the man himself; readers 
in general know nothing of him, his name 
never points a paragraph. The Veneerings, in 
Our Mutual Friend^ seem better on a re-read- 
ing than in a memory of the acquaintance with 
them long ago. This is often the case with 
Dickens, and speaks strongly in his favour. 
They smell of furniture polish ; their newness 
in society is a positive distress to the nerves ; 
to read of them is to revive a sensation one 
has occasionally experienced in fact. Being 
but sketches, they are of necessity (in Dickens's 
method) all emphasis ; we never lose sight of 
their satiric meaning ; their very name (like that 
of the Circumlocution Office) signals caricature. 
At this point Dickens connects himself once 
more with literary traditions ; we are reminded 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 165 

of the nomenclature of English drama ; of 
Justice Greedy, of Anthony Absolute, Mrs. 
Malaprop, and the rest. It is only in his 
subordinate figures, and rarely then, that he 
falls into this bad habit, so destructive of 
illusion. For the most part, his names are 
aptly selected, or invented with great skill — 
skill, of course, different from that of Balzac, 
who aims at another kind of effectiveness. 
Gamp, Micawber, Bumble, Pipchin — to be 
sure they are so familiar to us that we associate 
them inevitably with certain characters, but one 
recognizes their exquisite rightness. Pecksniff 
is more daring, and touches the limit of fine 
discretion. In a very few cases he drew upon 
that list of grotesque names which anyone can 
compile from a directory, names which are 
generally valueless in fiction just because they 
really exist; Venus, for example. 

Anything but a caricature, though as signifi- 
cant a figure as any among these minor groups, 
is Mr. Casby in Liu/e Dorrit, the venerable 
grandsire, of snowy locks and childlike visage ; 
the Patriarch, as he is called, who walks in a 
light of contemplative benevolence. Mr. Casby 
is a humbug of a peculiarly dangerous kind ; 
under various disguises he is constantly met 
with in the England of to-day. This sweetly 
philosophic being owns houses, and those of 



i66 CHARLES DICKENS 

the kind which we now call slums. Of course 
he knows nothing about their evil condition ; 
of course he employs an agent to collect his 
rents, and is naturally surprised when this agent 
falls short in the expected receipts. It pains 
him that human nature should be so dishonest ; 
for the sake of his tenants themselves it behoves 
him to insist on full and regular payment. 
When, in the end, Mr. Casby has his impres- 
sive locks ruthlessly shorn by the agent risen 
in revolt against such a mass of lies and cruelty 
and unclean selfishness, we feel that the pun- 
ishment is inadequate. This question of land- 
lordism should have been treated by Dickens 
on a larger scale ; it remains one of the curses 
of English life, and is likely to do so until the 
victims of house-owners see their way to cut 
not the hair, but the throats, of a few selected 
specimens. Mr. Casby, nowadays, does not 
take the trouble to assume a sweet or reverend 
aspect ; if he lives in the neighbourhood of his 
property, he is frankly a brute ; if, as is so often 
the case, he resides in a very different part of 
the town, his associates are persons who would 
smile indeed at any affectation of sanctity. In 
this, and some other directions, hypocrisy 
has declined among us. Our people of all 
classes have advanced in the understanding of 
business, a word which will justify most atro- 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 167 

cities, and excuse all but every form of shame- 
lessness. 

That rich little book, Great Expectations, 
contains a humbug less offensive than Casby, 
and on the surface greatly amusing, but illus- 
trative of a contemptible quality closely allied 
with the commercial spirit. Seen at a distance 
Mr. Pumblechook is a source of inextinguish- 
able laughter ; near at hand he is seen to be a 
very sordid creature. A time-server to his 
marrow, he adds the preposterous self-esteem 
which always gave Dickens so congenial an 
opportunity. Here we have a form of moral 
dishonesty peculiar to no one people. Mr. 
Pumblechook's bare-faced pretence that he is 
the maker of Pip*s fortune, his heavy patron- 
age whilst that fortune endures, and his sour 
desertion of the you'ng man when circumstances 
alter, is mere overfed humanity discoverable all 
the world over. He has English traits, and 
we are constrained to own the man as a rela- 
tive ; we meet him as often as we do the tailor 
who grovels before the customer unexpectedly 
become rich. Compare him with the other 
embodiments of dishonesty, and it is seen, not 
only what inexhaustible material of this kind 
lay at Dickens*s command, but with what 
excellent art he differentiates his characters. 

Less successful are the last pieces of satire 



i68 CHARLES DICKENS 

drawing I can find space to mention. In this 
chapter, rather than in the next, is the place for 
Mrs. Jellyby, who loses all distinction of sex, 
and comes near to losing all humanity, in her 
special craze. Women have gone far towards 
such a consummation, and one dare not refuse 
to admit her possibility ; but the extravagance 
of the thing rather repels, and we are never so 
assured of Mrs. Jellyby as of Mr. Pecksniff. 
Unacceptable in the same way is that fiercely 
charitable lady who goes about with her tracts 
and her insolence among the cottages of the 
poor. One knows how such persons nowadays 
demean themselves, and we can readily believe 
that they behaved more outrageously half a 
century ago ; but being meant as a type, this 
religious female dragoon misses the mark ; we 
refuse credence and turn away. 

Caricature in general is a word of deprecia- 
tory meaning. I have already made it clear 
how far I am from agreeing with the critics 
who think that to call Dickens a caricatur- 
ist, and to praise his humour, is to dis- 
miss him once for all. It seems to me that 
in all his very best work he pursues an ideal 
widely apart from that of caricature in any 
sense ; and that in other instances he permits 
himself an emphasis, like in kind to that of 
the caricaturist, but by its excellence of art, its 



SATIRIC PORTRAITURE 169 

fine sincerity of purpose, removed from every 
inferior association. To call Mrs. Gamp a 
caricature is an obvious abuse of language ; 
not less so, I think, to apply the word to 
Mr. Pecksniff or to Uriah Heep. Occasion- 
ally, missing the effect he intended, Dickens 
produced work which invites this definition; 
at times, again, he deliberately drew a figure 
with that literary overcharging which cor- 
responds to the exaggeration, small or great, 
of professed caricaturists with the pencil. His 
finest humour, his most successful satire, be- 
longs to a different order of art. To be con- 
vinced of this one need but think of the 
multiplicity of detail, all exquisitely finished, 
which goes to make his best known portraits. 
Full justice has never been done to this 
abounding richness- of invention, this untir- 
ing felicity of touch in minutiae innumerable. 
Caricature proceeds by a broad and simple 
method. It is no more the name for Dick- 
ens's full fervour of creation, than for Shake- 
speare's in his prose comedy. Each is a 
supreme idealist. 



CHAPTER VII 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 



With female readers Dickens was never a 
prime favourite. One feels very sure that 
they contributed little or nothing to the suc- 
cess of Pickwick, In the angelic Oliver they 
began, no doubt, to find matter of interest, 
and thence onward they might " take to " the 
triumphant novelist for the pathos of his child- 
life and to some extent because of his note 
of domesticity. But on the whole it was for 
men that Dickens wrote. To-day the women 
must be very few who by deliberate choice 
open a volume of his works. 

The humourist never strongly appeals to 
that audience. Moreover, it is natural enough 
that a writer so often boisterous, who deals so 
largely with the coarser aspects of life, who 
gives us very little of what is conventionally 
called tenderness, and a good deal of blood- 
thirsty violence, should yield to many others 
in women's choice. For certain of them, 
Dickens is simply " vulgar '* — and there an 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 171 

end of it ; they can no more read him with 
pleasure than they can his forerunners of 
the eighteenth century. In a class where 
this might not be honestly felt as an objec- 
tion, he is practically unknown to mothers 
and daughters who devote abundant leisure 
to fiction of other kinds ; and representatives 
of this public have been known to speak of 
him with frank dislike. One reason, it seems, 
for such coldness in presumably gentle hearts 
goes deeper than those which first suggest 
themselves. If George Eliot was of opinion 
that Shakespeare shows himself unjust to 
women, and on that account could not wholly 
revere him, we need not be surprised that 
average members of her sex should see in 
Dickens something like a personal enemy, 
a confirmed libeller of all who speak the 
feminine tongue. 

For, setting aside his would-be tragic figures, 
the Lady Dedlocks and Edith Dombeys of 
whom enough has been said; neglecting also 
for the moment his exemplars in the life 
of home (doubtfully sympathetic to female 
readers of our day) ; it is obvious that 
Dickens wrote of women in his liveliest spirit 
of satire. AVonderfai as fact, and admirable 
as art, are the numberless pictures of more 
or less detestable v/idov/s, wives, and spinsters 



172 CHARLES DICKENS 

which appear throughout his books. Beyond 
dispute, they must be held among his finest 
work ; this portraiture alone would establish 
his claim to greatness. And I think it might 
be forcibly argued that, for incontestable proof 
of Dickens's fidelity in reproducing the life he 
knew, one should turn in the first place to 
his gallery of foolish, ridiculous, or offensive 
women. 

These remarkable creatures belong for the 
most part to one rank of life, that which 
we vaguely designate as the lower middle class. 
In general their circumstances are comfort- 
able ; they suffer no hardship — save that of 
birth, which they do not perceive as such ; 
nothing is asked of them but a quiet and 
amiable discharge of household duties ; they 
are treated by their male kindred with great, 
often with extraordinary, consideration. Yet 
their characteristic is acidity of temper and 
boundless license of querulous or insulting 
talk. The real business of their lives is to 
make all about them as uncomfortable as they 
can. Invariably, they are unintelligent and 
untaught ; very often they are flagrantly im- 
becile. Their very virtues (if such persons 
can be said to have any) become a scourge. 
In the highways and by-ways of life, by the 
fireside, and in the bed-chamber, their voices 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 173 

shrill upon the terrified ear. It is difficult to 
believe that death can stifle them ; one imag- 
ines them upon the threshold of some other 
world, sounding confusion among unhappy- 
spirits who hoped to have found peace. 

There needs no historical investigation to 
ascertain the truthfulness of these present- 
ments. Among the poorer folk, especially 
in London, such women may be observed 
to-day by any inquirer sufficiently courageous ; 
they are a multitude that no man can number ; 
every other house in the cheap suburbs will 
be found to contain at least one specimen — 
very often two, for the advantage of quarrelling 
when men are not at hand. Education has 
done little as yet to improve the tempers and 
the intellects of women in this rank. A hu- 
morist of our time suggests that sheer dul- 
ness and monotony of existence explains their 
unamiable habits, that they quarrel because 
they can get no other form of excitement. I 
believe there is some truth in this, but it does 
not cover the whole ground. Many a woman 
who frequents theatres and music-halls, goes 
shopping and lives in comparative luxury, has 
brought the arts of ill-temper to high perfec- 
tion. Indeed, I am not sure that increase of 
liberty is not tending to exasperate these evil 
characteristics in women vulgarly bred ; if 



174 CHARLES DICKENS 

Dickens were now writing, I believe he would 
have to add to his representative women the 
well-dressed shrew who proceeds on the slight- 
est provocation from fury of language to vio- 
lence of act. Mrs. Varden does not dream 
of assaulting her husband, for in truth she 
loves him ; Mrs. Snagsby is in genuine terror 
at the thought that the deferential law-stationer 
may come to harm. Nowadays these ladies 
would enjoy a very much larger life, would sys- 
tematically neglect their children (if they chose 
to have any), and would soothe their nerves, 
in moments carefully chosen, by flinging at 
the remonstrant husband any domestic object 
to which they attached no special value. 

Through his early life, Dickens must have 
been in constant observation of these social 
pests. In every lodging-house he entered, 
such a voice would surely be sounding. His 
women use utterance such as no male genius 
could have invented ; from the beginning he 
knew it perfectly, the vocabulary, the syntax, 
the figurative flights of this appalling language. 
" God's great gift of speech abused " was the 
commonplace of his world. Another man, 
obtaining his release from those depths, would 
have turned away in loathing ; Dickens found 
therein matter for his mirth, material for his 
art. When one thinks of it, how strange it is 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 175 

that such an unutterable curse should become, 
in the artist hands, an incitement to joyous 
laughter ! As a matter of fact, these women 
produced more misery than can be calculated. 
That he does not exhibit this side of the pic- 
ture is the peculiarity of Dickens's method ; a 
defect, of course, from one point of view, but 
inseparable from his humorous treatment of 
life. Women who might well have wrecked 
homes, are shown as laughable foils for the in- 
finite goodness and patience of men about 
them. Justly, by the by, a matter of com- 
plaint to the female critic. Weller, and Var- 
den, and Snagsby, and Joe Gargery are too 
favourable specimens of the average husband ; 
in such situations, one or other of them would 
certainly have lost his patience, and either have 
fled the country/ or have turned wife-beater. 
Varden is a trifle vexed now and then, but he 
clinks it off at his cheery anvil, and restores 
his jovial mood with a draught from Toby. 
Mr. Snagsby coughs behind his hand, is ner- 
vously perturbed, and heartily wishes things 
were otherwise, but never allows himself a 
harsh word to his "little woman.'* As for 
Joe Gargery, what could be expected of the 
sweetest and humanest temper man was ever 
blest withal ? No, it is decidedly unfair. Not 
even Jonas Chuzzlewit (who, of course, has a 



176 CHARLES DICKENS 

martyr of a wife) can outbalance such a partial 
record of long suffering in husbands. 

It is worth while to consider with some at- 
tention these promoters of public mirth. Pick- 
wick would have been incomplete without this 
element of joviality, and we are not likely to 
forget the thorn in the flesh of Mr. Weller, 
senior. Sam's father is responsible, I suppose, 
for that jesting on the subject of widows, which 
even to-day will serve its turn on the stage or 
in the comic paper ; it is vulgar, to be sure, 
but vulgarity in Pickwick becomes a fine art ; 
we cannot lose a word of the old coaching 
hero. Mrs. Weller it is hard to describe in 
moderate terms ; taking the matter prosaically, 
she has all the minor vices that can inhere in 
woman ; but the mere mention of her moves 
to chuckling. On her death-bed, we are given 
to understand, she saw the error of her ways. 
Such persons occasionally do, but her conver- 
sion comes a trifle late. Enough for Dickens 
that we are touched by the old man's spirit of 
forgiveness. It is the bit of light in a picture 
felt, after all, to be grimy enough ; the bit of 
sweet and clean humanity v/hich our author 
always desires to show after he has made his 
fun out of sorry circumstance. In Oliver 
Twisty the feminine note grows shriller; we 
have Mrs. Sowerberry, sordid tyrant and 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 177 

scold, and the woman who becomes Mrs. 
Bumble. We are meant to reflect, of course, 
that the " porochial " dignitary gets only his 
deserts ; he who marries with his eye upon a 
pair of silver sugar-tongs, and is a blustering 
jackass to boot, can hardly be too severely 
dealt with. So Mrs. Bumble exhibits her 
true self for her husband's benefit, and, so far 
as we know, does not repent of her triumphs 
as an obese virago. Barnaby Rudge is enriched 
with Mrs. Varden and her handmaid Miggs. 
Now of Mrs. Varden it can be said that she 
typifies a large class of most respectable wives. 
She is not coarse, she is not malignant, she is 
not incapable of good-humour ; but so much 
value does she attach to the gleams of that 
bright quality, that not one is suffered to es- 
cape her until hen household has been brought 
to the verge of despair by her persistent sour- 
ness and sulkiness. No reason whatever can 
be assigned for it ; when she takes offence, it 
pleases her to do so. She has in perfection all 
the illogicality of thought, all the maddening 
tricks of senseless language, which, doubtless 
for many thousands of years, have served her 
like for weapons. It is an odd thing that 
evolution has allowed the persistence of this 
art, for we may be quite sure that many a 
primitive woman paid for it with a broken 
12 



lyS CHARLES DICKENS 

skull. Here it is, however, flourishing and 
like to flourish. The generations do not im- 
prove upon it ; this art of irritation has long 
ago been brought to its highest possible point. 
Who knows? A future civilization may dis- 
cover lapses of common-sense and a finesse of 
fatuous language unknown to Mrs. Varden. 
In the present, she points a limit of possibility 
in these directions. Her talk is marvellously 
reported; never a note of exaggeration, and 
nothing essential ever forgotten. The same 
is always to be noted in Dickens's idiotic 
women ; their phrases might have been taken 
down by a phonograph for reproduction in 
literature. Such accuracy is a very great thing 
indeed ; few novelists can compare in it with 
Dickens. His men he may permit to luxuri- 
ate in periods obviously artificial; their pecu- 
liarities are sometimes overdone, their talk 
becomes a fantasia of the author's elaboration, 
but with his v/omen (of the class we are review- 
ing) it is never so. Partly, no doubt, because 
one cannot exaggerate what is already exag- 
gerated to the n'th power ; but it was very 
possible to miss the absolutely right in such 
a maze of imbecilities, and I believe that 
Dickens does it never. 

Mrs. Varden repents, Mrs. Varden is stricken 
with remorse, Mrs. Varden becomes a model 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 



179 



wife. Let the Jew believe it ! Not even on 
her deathbed did it happen, but simply because 
she had a fright in the Gordon riots. Yes ; 
for one week, or perchance for two, she might 
have affected (even felt) penitence ; after that, 
heaven pity poor Gabriel for having taken her 
at her word ! The thing is plainly impossible. 
Such women, at her age, are incapable of change ; 
they will but grow worse, till the pangs of 
death shake them. Mrs. Varden would have 
lingered to her ninetieth year, mopping and 
mowing her ill-humour when language failed, 
and grinning illogicality with toothless gums. 
She is converted, to make things pleasant for 
us. We thank the author's goodness and say, 
*t is but a story. 

Miggs, the admirer of Sim Tappertit, is 
idiocy and malice combined. To tell the truth, 
one does not much like to read of Miggs : we 
feel it is all a little hard upon women soured 
by celibacy. Dickens's time was hard indeed 
on the unwilling spinster, and we do not think 
it an amiable trait. Nowadays things are so 
different ; it is common to find spinsters who 
are such by choice, and not a few of them are 
doing good work in the world. Sixty years 
ago, every unmarried woman of a certain age 
was a subject of open or covert mockery : she 
had failed in her chase of men, and must be 



i8o CHARLES DICKENS 

presumed full of rancour against both sexes. 
As for Miggs, of course the detestable Mrs. 
Varden was largely answerable for her evil 
qualities ; when the handmaid was turned out of 
doorSj the mistress should by rights have gone 
with her. She amuses a certain class of readers, 
but has not much value either as humour or 
satire or plain fact. 

There looms upon us the lachrymose coun- 
tenance of Mrs. Gummidge. This superan- 
nuated nuisance serves primarily, of course, to 
illustrate the fine qualities of the Peggotty 
household : that she is borne with for one day 
says indeed much for their conscientious kind- 
ness. The boatman, delicately sympathetic, 
explains her fits of depression by saying that 
she has " been thinking of the old 'un." 
Possibly so, and the result of her mournful re- 
flection is that she behaves with monstrous in- 
gratitude to the people who keep her out of the 
workhouse. " I *m a lone lorn creature, and 
everythink goes contrairy with me." This 
vice of querulousness is one of the most intol- 
erable beheld by the sun. Dickens merely 
smiles ; and of course it is large-hearted in him 
to do so : he would have us forbearing with 
such poor creatures, would have us understand 
that they suffer as well as cause suffering to 
others. One acknowledges the justice of the 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN i8i 

lesson. But we have not done with Mrs. 
Gummidge ; together with the Yarmouth family, 
she emigrated to Australia, and there — became 
a bright, happy, serviceable woman ! Con- 
verted, she, by the great grief that had befallen 
her friends ; made ashamed of whining over 
megrims when death and shame were making 
havoc in the little home. Well, it may have 
been so ; but Mrs. Gummidge was very old 
for such a ray of reason to pierce her skull. 
In any case, we do not think of her in Australia. 
She sits for ever in the house on Yarmouth 
sands (sands not yet polluted by her kin from 
Whitechapel), and shakes her head and pipes 
her eye, a monument of selfish misery. 

Behold Mrs. Snagsby. To all Mrs. Var- 
den's vices this woman adds one that may be 
strongly recommended for the ruin of domestic 
peace when the others have failed — if fail they 
can. She is jealous of the little law-stationer ; 
she imagines for him all manner of licentious 
intrigues. That such imagination is inconsis- 
tent with the plainest facts of life in no way 
invalidates its hold upon Mrs. Snagsby's mind. 
She will make things as unpleasant as possible 
in the grimy house in Cook's Court ; the little 
man shall have rest neither day nor night, his 
wife shall become a burden to him. And good- 
ness knows that the house, at the best of times. 



1 82 CHARLES DICKENS 

falls a good deal short of cheerfulness. There 
is Guster. Who shall restrain a laugh, hear- 
ing of Guster ? Plainly described, this girl is 
an underpaid, underfed, and overworked slavey, 
without a friend in the world, — unless it be 
Mr. Snagsby, — and subject to frequent epilep- 
tic fits. And we roar with laughter as often 
as she is named ! It is Dickens's pleasure 
that we shall do so, and, if it comes to defence 
of so strange a subject of humour, one can 
only say that, from a certain point of view, 
everything in this world is laughable. Look 
broadly enough, and it is undoubtedly amusing 
that such a woman as Mrs. Snagsby should 
coarsely tyrannize over a poor diseased crea- 
ture, who toils hard and lives on a pittance. 
But, in strictness, the humour here perceivable 
is not of the kind we usually attribute to 
Dickens ; it has something either of philo- 
sophic sublimity, or of mortal bitterness. For 
my own part, I think Dickens points, in such 
situations as this, to larger significances than 
were consciously in his mind. I may return 
to the matter in speaking expressly of his 
humour ; here we are specially concerned with 
the exhibition of Mrs. Snagsby's personality. 
Happily, she undergoes no moral palingenesis ; 
by the date of Bleak House her creator had 
outgrown the inclination for that kind of thing. 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 183 

We are sure that she made the deferential 
little man miserable to the end of his days ; 
and when she had buried him, she held forth 
for many years more on the martyrdom of her 
married life. She is decidedly more hateful 
than Mrs. Varden, by virtue of her cruelty to 
the girl, and more of a force for ill by virtue of 
her animal jealousy. In short — a most amus- 
ing figure. 

It certainly is a troublesome fact for sensi- 
tive female readers that this, a great English 
novelist of the Victorian age, so abounds in 
women who are the curse of their husbands* 
lives. A complete list of them would, I im- 
agine, occupy nearly a page of this book. Mrs. 
Jellyby I have already discussed. I have 
spoken of the much more lifelike Mrs. Pocket, 
a capital portrait. I have alluded to the uncom- 
mon realism of Dr. Marigold*s wife. A men- 
tion must at least be made of Mrs. M'Stinger, 
who, as Mrs. Bunsby, enters upon such a 
promising field of fresh activity. But there re- 
mains one full-length picture which we may by 
no means neglect, its name Mrs. Joe Gargery. 

Mrs. Gargery belongs to Dickens^s later 
manner. In such work as this, his hand was 
still inimitably true, and his artistic conscience 
no longer allowed him to play with circum- 
stance as in the days of Mrs. Varden, The 



1 84 CHARLES DICKENS 

blacksmith's wife is a shrew of the most highly 
developed order. If ever she is good-tempered 
in the common sense of the word, she never 
lets it be suspected ; without any assignable 
cause, she is invariably acrid and ready at a 
moment's notice to break into fury of abuse. 
It gratifies her immensely to have married the 
softest-hearted man that ever lived, and also 
that he happens to be physically one of the 
strongest ; the joy of trampling upon him, 
knowing that he who could kill her with a 
backhand blow will never even answer the bit- 
terest insult with an unkind word ! It delights 
her, too, that she has a little brother, a mere 
baby still, whom she can ill-use at her leisure, 
remembering always that every harshness to 
the child is felt still worse by the big good 
fellow, her husband. Do you urge that Dickens 
should give a cause for this evil temper? 
Cause there is none — save of that scientific 
kind which has no place in English novels. It is 
the peculiarity of these women that no one can 
conjecture why they behave so ill. The nature 
of the animals — nothing more can be said. 

Notice, now, that in Mrs. Gargery, though 
he still disguises the worst of the situation with 
his unfailing humour, Dickens gives us more 
of the harsh truth than in any previous book. 
That is a fine scene where the woman, by a 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 185 

malicious lie, causes a fight between Joe and 
Orlick ; a true illustration of character, and 
well brought out. Again, Mrs. Joe's punish- 
ment. Here we are very far from the early- 
novels. Mrs. Gargery shall be brought to 
quietness ; but how ? By a half-murderous 
blow on the back of her head, from which she 
will never recover. Dickens understood by 
this time that there is no other efficacious way 
with these ornaments of their sex. A felling 
and stunning and all but killing blow, followed 
by paralysis and slow death. A sharp remedy, 
but no whit sharper than the evil it cures. 
Mrs. Gargery, under such treatment, learns 
patience and the rights of other people. We 
are half sorry she cannot rise and put her learn- 
ing into practice, but there is always a doubt. 
As likely as not she would take to drinking, 
and enter on a new phase of ferocity. 

Of higher social standing, not perhaps better 
educated but certainly better bred, are the 
women who acknowledge their great exemplar 
in Mrs. Nickleby. This lady — all things 
considered, the term may be applied without 
abuse — has passed the greater part of her life 
in a rural district, and morally she belongs, I 
think, rather to the country than the town ; 
there is a freshness about her, a naivete not — 
up to a certain point — disagreeable; her man- 



1 86 CHARLES DICKENS 

ners and conversation are suggestive of long 
afternoons, and evenings of infinite leisure. 
Mrs. Nickleby is, above all, well-meaning; 
according to her lights she is gracious and 
tolerant ; she has natural affections, and would 
be sincerely distressed by a charge of selfish- 
ness. Unhappily the poor woman has been 
born with the intellectual equipment of a 
Somerset ewe. It would be a delicate question 
of psychology to distinguish her from the harm- 
less, smiling idiot whom we think it unneces- 
sary and cruel to put under restraint. One 
may say, indeed, that this defect is radical in 
all Dickens's female characters ; the better- 
hearted succeed in keeping it out of sight — in 
the others it becomes flagrant and a terror. 
Sixty years ago there was practically no pro- 
vision in England for the mental training of 
women. Sent early to a good school, and kept 
there till the age, say, of one-and-twenty, Mrs. 
Nickleby would have grown into a quite en- 
durable gentlewoman, aware of her natural 
weakness, and a modest participant in general 
conversation. Allowed to develop in her own 
way, and married to a man only less unintelligent 
than herself, she puts forth a wonderful luxuri- 
ance of amiable fatuity. Thoughts, in the strict 
sense of the word, she has none ; her brain is a 
mere blind mechanism for setting in motion an 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 187 

irresponsible tongue ; together they express in 
human language the sentiments of the ewe 
aforesaid. Mr. Nickleby died in the prime of 
life; what else could be the fate of a man 
doomed to listen to this talk morning, noon, 
and night ? With Mrs. Nickleby one cannot 
converse; she understands the meaning of 
nothing that is said to her; she is incapable 
of answering a question, or of seeing the logical 
bearings of any statement whatsoever. One 
conviction is impressed upon her (pardon the 
word) mind : that throughout life she has in- 
variably said and done the right thing, and 
that other persons, in their relations with her, 
have been as invariably wrong. Let events turn 
how they may, they do but serve to confirm 
her complacent position. Having exerted her- 
self to the utmost in urging a particular line of 
conduct, which, on trial, proves to have been 
the worst that could have been followed, Mrs. 
Nickleby blandly reminds her victims that she 
had known from the first, and repeatedly de- 
clared, what would be the result of such mani- 
fest imprudence. Should this lead to an 
outbreak of masculine impatience, not to say 
anger, the good lady receives a nervous shock, 
under which she pales, and pants, and falters 
as the domestic martyr, the victim of surprising 
unreason and brutality. As it happens, she 



i88 CHARLES DICKENS 

does not bring her children to the gutter and 
herself to the workhouse ; we acknowledge 
the providence that watches over exemplary- 
fools. And after all, as men must laugh at 
something, it is as well that they should find 
in Mrs. Nickleby matter for mirth. She is 
ubiquitous, and doubtless always will be. She 
cannot be chained and muzzled, or forbidden 
to propagate her kind. We must endure her, 
as we endure the caprices of the sky. An ulti- 
mate fact of nature, and a great argument for 
those who decline to take life too seriously. 

This was early work of Dickens, but not to 
be improved upon by any increase of experience 
or of skill. A good many years later, he pro- 
duced a companion portrait, that of Flora 
Finching in Little Dorrit — the neglected book 
which contains several of his best things. We 
are told that the picture is from life (as was that 
of Mrs. Nickleby), and that the exuberant 
Flora, in the bloom of her youth, had been to 
Dickens himself even what Dora was to David 
Copperfield — a piece of biography in which 
one is very willing to put faith. I am dis- 
posed to credit Flora Finching with mental 
power superior to Mrs. Nickleby's ; the pref- 
erence may provoke a charge of subtlety, but 
I adhere to it after a long acquaintance with 
both ladies. Indeed, one rather likes Flora. 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 189 

Of course she has killed her husband ; but 
one chooses to forget all that. Flora, to tell 
the truth, has some imagination, a touch of 
poetry ; in her heart she is convinced that as 
Mrs. Clennam she would have been a happier 
woman. Yet she has sense enough and fantasy- 
enough only to play with the thought ; it be- 
comes something graceful in her commonplace 
life ; a little lacking in delicacy, she causes her 
old lover some embarrassment, but never 
seriously hopes to win him back. When 
Clennam marries Little Dorrit, Flora behaves 
admirably — the all-sufficient proof of what I 
have just said. Her character is in truth a 
very strong plea for the fair education of 
women. Flora needed but that ; it would 
have made her, I really think, rather a charm- 
ing person. Nowadays one will rarely meet 
any one suggestive of her; for she was at all 
times an exception in the vulgar world, and 
her like have since been schooled into the self- 
restraint, of which, under favourable conditions, 
they are perfectly capable. The species of 
sentimentality seen in Flora was at that time 
fed upon songs and verses congenial to the 
feeble mind ; born thirty years later, Flora 
would have been led to a much better taste in 
that direction, with the result of greater self- 
command in all. She is a kind soul, and 



190 



CHARLES DICKENS 



doubtless became a very pleasant, even useful, 
friend of little Mrs. Clennam. Such a woman 
is only dangerous when she feels that the law 
has surrendered to her a real live man — has 
given him, bound hand and foot, to her care 
and her mercy. As a maid, as a widow, she will 
do no harm, nor wish to do any, beyond distress- 
ing the tympanum and tasking the patience 
of anyone with whom she genially converses. 
One does not venture to begin praising work 
such as this. Eulogy would lose itself in en- 
thusiasm. Pass, rather, to the gallery of women 
who are neither married shrews nor well-mean- 
ing pests, yet each peculiar for her mental and 
moral vice. We glance at Miss Squeers. 
Fanny, it is plain, has relatives in the pages of 
Smollett ; one seems to remember a damsel in 
Roderick Random of whom, perhaps, the less 
said the better ; the intercourse between Miss 
Squeers and Nicholas brings this chapter to 
mind, and points a change alike in national 
manners and in literature. As a wife, Fanny 
would pass into that other category with 
which we have done. Her London parallel 
is perhaps Sophy Whackles, from whom Mr. 
Swivel ler had so narrow and so fortunate an 
escape. Such maidens as these, Dickens must 
have had many opportunities of observing ; 
his social canvas would have been imperfect 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 191 

without them. Though it seems unjust to put 
her in this place, I must mention Susan Nipper, 
the nurse of Florence Dombey. Susan begins 
well on the pattern of her class ; she is snappy, 
and brief tempered, fond of giving smacks and 
pulling hair; one sees no reason why with 
favouring circumstances she should not develop 
into a nagger of distinction. But something is 
observable in her which imposes caution on 
prophecy ; we see that Susan, though a mere 
domestic, has a very unusual endowment of 
wits ; she is sharp in retort, but also in percep- 
tion ; in any case she cannot become a mere 
mouthing idiot. In course of time we see that 
she has a good heart. And so it comes to pass 
that, in spite of origin and evil example, the 
girl grows in grace. She is fortunately situated ; 
her sweet young mistress does her every kind 
of good ; and when she marries Mr. Toots we 
have no misgivings whatever as to that eccentric 
gentleman's happiness. 

Then, typical of a very large class indeed, 
comes Mrs. Crupp, who "does for" David 
Copperfield in his chambers. It is unnecessary 
to use the short words which wpuld adequately 
describe Mrs. Crupp ; enough to say that she 
stands for the baser kind of London landlady 
— a phrase which speaks volumes. Some day 
it will cause laughter, indeed, and something 



192 CHARLES DICKENS 

else, to think that young men beginning life as 
students, and what not, should have fallen, as 
a matter of course, into the hands of Mrs. 
Crupp. Her name smells of strong liquor ; 
it includes all dishonesty and uncleanliness. 
The monstrosity of her pretensions touches 
the highest point of the ludicrous. What, then, 
is one to say of Sarah Gamp, of Betsy Prig, 
considered as women ? Of Mrs. Gamp in an- 
other aspect I have spoken at some length ; 
she is one of those figures in Dickens to vs^hich 
one necessarily returns, again and again ; as art, 
the very quintessence of his genius ; as social 
fact, worthy of repeated contemplation. After 
all, women they are, these sister hags of the 
birth and death chamber. Mrs. Gamp has her 
own ideas of tender emotion ; she is touched 
by the sight of an undertaker's children " play- 
ing at berryings down in the shop, and follerin* 
the order-book to its long home in the iron 
safe ! " Be it remarked that there is an appre- 
ciable difference between Mrs. Gamp's nature 
and that of Mrs. Prig ; we are clearly shown 
that Betsy is the harder, coarser, more merce- 
nary of the twain. If well plied with spirits and 
pickled cucumber, Sarah Gamp might be capa- 
ble of an elementary generosity ; it is our per- 
ception of this which helps to keep the creature 
amusing, where she might so easily sink below 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 193 

everything but our contemptuous disgust. 
Betsy Prig is of a lower order, even socially ; 
one may be sure that she had much less to do 
with the better class of clients. There is in 
her a spitefulness, a greedy malignancy, not 
found in the nurse of Kingsgate Street ; v>^here 
Mrs. Gamp would exhibit hostility in astound- 
ing contortions of thick- throated phrase, irresis- 
tibly laughable, Betsy Prig would fall into the 
mere language of the gutter. Their quarrel 
(one of the great things in literature) makes 
proof of this, though Dickens's most adroit 
idealism avoids the offensiveness of the real 
dialogue. As a girl — try to imagine Sarah 
Gamp as a young girl ! We know where and 
how she lived, what examples she had. It was 
practically Hogarth's London which saw her 
birth and breeding ; but the London of to-day 
is well able to 'produce such women ; one 
catches a glimpse of her Hke in the market 
streets, and the public-houses. Well, as a girl, 
she must have been very plump and good- 
humoured, with quaint turns of speech, fore- 
telling the eloquence of her prime. Mr. 
Ruskin has well pointed out the broad distinc- 
tion between this London jargon and anything 
worthy of being called a dialect (by the by, the 
dialect on which London has exercised its de- 
forming influence is that of Essex, where a 

13 



194 CHARLES DICKENS 

confusion of v and w^ no longer heard in town, 
may still be noticed) ; he adds that the speech 
of Mrs. Gamp is pure vulgarity, its insurpassa- 
ble illustration. And the woman herself (one 
lingers over her affectionately) may be dismissed 
as vulgarity incarnate. Her profession, her 
time, even her sex, may, from this point of 
view, be called accidents. Desiring to study 
the essential meaning of the vulgar^ one turns 
from every living instance, every acute disquisi- 
tion, and muses over Sarah Gamp. 

When we speak of the working class, we 
understand something quite distinct from, 
though not of necessity inferior to, the classes 
represented by all these women ; though Mrs. 
Gargery, no doubt, belongs to that social order. 
With the working-class household, Dickens, 
I think, is never entirely successful ; one rea- 
son among others being that he shrinks from 
criticizing the very poor. In the homes of 
toilers, his great heart has its way and he can 
only in general show us such people at their 
best. But one recalls two working-class women, 
who, however gently drawn, are living charac- 
ters : Polly Toodle and Mrs. Plornish. Paul 
Dombey's nurse, who would have it considered 
in the wages if she is to be called " out of her 
name," and who as the mother of Rob the 
Grinder suffers so many anxieties, may fairly 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 195 

stand for a good woman of the proletary ; and 
how very favourably she compares with ordi- 
nary women in the class (for reasons of money) 
just above her ! She is not vulgar, and, as a 
typical good wife in that rank, need not be so ; 
for it is easier to escape such taint in the house 
of the engine-driver Toodle than in Mr. 
Snagsby's upstairs parlour. Mrs. Plornish, 
the plasterer's wife, is likewise an excellent 
creature marked by more peculiarity; her firm 
belief that she makes herself intelligible to a 
foreigner by grotesque distortion of the English 
tongue is one of the truest and most amusing 
things in Dickens. Many a Mrs. Plornish 
honestly supposes that in order to speak foreign 
languages, it is only necessary — as I once 
heard one of them remark — to " learn how 
to twist the mouth." This is an innocent con- 
viction, which disturbs nobody's peace. We 
like Mrs. Plornish, too, for her tenderness to 
the old father from the workhouse, and her 
sincere admiration when he pipes his thin little 
song. These women are blessed with a good 
temper, the source of everything enjoyable in 
life. However poor and ignorant, they shed 
about them the light of home. It is a type 
that does not much change, so far ; and one 
thinks with misgivings of the day when that 
increased comfort which is their due, shall open 



196 CHARLES DICKENS 

to such women the dreadful possibilities of 
half-knowledge. 

Come the eccentrics; of all classes, of all 
tempers ; the signal for mirth. Here, I sup- 
pose, must be introduced the sister of Sampson 
Brass ; though one finds it difficult to think of 
Miss Sally as feminine. She has the courage 
of her opinions, and shows something like 
heroism in scoundreldom, when brought face 
to face with the criminal law. One never met 
Miss Brass, but it is very possible that Dickens 
did. Later, he omits the ferocity from his 
grotesques. Miss Mowcher, we are told, was 
meant originally to play a very ugly part in 
the story of Emily and Steerforth, but an 
odd incident, nothing less than the reception 
of a letter from Miss Mowcher herself, led 
Dickens to use the character in quite another 
way, making it point a lesson of charity. Mr. 
Dombey's friend Miss Tox is a first-rate 
toady, if the word may be used of one so 
respectable and kind-hearted ; she represents, 
with abundance of oddity, the army of genteel 
old maids, as the term was in that day under- 
stood. Miss Tox is out of date, or very nearly 
so; to-day she finds much better occupation 
than in prostrating herself before Mr. Dombey, 
or jealously watching the Major, or looking 
after her canaries ; her goodness is reinforced 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 197 

by knowledge, and her presence is a blessing 
in many of the dark places of our vast city. 
Eccentric, indeed, but on a fine basis of sense 
and character, is the immortal Betsy Trotwood. 
Wasted in her time, or nearly so ; no scope 
for her beyond the care of Mr. Dick, varied 
by assaults upon seaside donkeys (the quad- 
rupeds). To be sure, she is the making of 
David, but that came accidentally. But Miss 
Trotwood is in advance of her age ; victim of 
a bad marriage, she does not see in this an all- 
sufficient destiny ; where others would have 
passed their life in tears and tracts. Miss Betsy 
sets about making for herself a rational exist- 
ence. We all know her — in various dis- 
guises, and should not be sorry to meet her 
more frequently. For the woman of sense 
and character is the salt of the earth ; with 
however flagrant peculiarities, may she increase 
and multiply ! 

One remembers Miss La Creevy, in her way 
no less admirably independent. That she got 
her living by the travesty of art was a misfor- 
tune which neither she nor any of her con- 
temporaries (half a dozen perhaps excepted) 
saw in that light, for she is of the Earliest 
Victorian. Rememberable, too, is the little 
dolFs dressmaker in Our Mutual Friend^ whose 
" bad child," her boneless drunkard of a father. 



198 CHARLES DICKENS 

keeps her leisure so fully occupied. But they 
are too numerous for several mention, these 
quaint examples of more or less distorted 
womankind — distorted by evil circumstances, 
and then ridiculed by the world responsible 
for their abnormalities. Dickens looked on 
them with tenderness, and makes us like, or 
respect, them even whilst we laugh. He saw, 
too, the larger questions involved in their ex- 
istence ; but on these it was no part of his 
mission as a story-teller to insist. Had he 
uttered his whole thought it would hardly 
have satisfied us upon whom the new century 
is breaking. His view of the possibilities of 
womanhood becomes tolerably clear when we 
turn to his normal types of marriageable 
maiden. 

In Pickwick there are several of them, and 
we think them vulgar. They must be called 
young ladies ; they are in easy position, and 
find it occupation enough to amuse themselves. 
Speaking plainly, Dickens as a young man 
could hardly have a just criterion of refine- 
ment ; the damsels of Dingley Dell were prob- 
ably as like ladies as anything he had seen. 
Does he mean them to be delicate in thought 
and speech and behaviour ? Or is he design- 
edly showing us the decent girl of an unre- 
fined class ? Their little screams — their shrill 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 



199 



laughter — their amorous facetiousness — you 
will not find that kind of thing now at Dingley 
Dell ; and even then, I fancy, it was rather out 
of place in the home of a country gentleman. 
Put these girls at Pentonville, and the picture 
excites no uneasiness. 

Mrs. Varden, we know, had a daughter, and 
the blushing, laughing, petulant Dolly has 
always been a favourite. Has she not even 
given her name to millinery ? For my own 
part, I see in Dolly her mother restored to 
youth, and notwithstanding the Gordon riots, 
notwithstanding Joe Willet's loss of an arm 
in " the Salwanners, in America where the war 
is," I feel an unpleasant certainty as to Dolly's 
conduct when she becomes a matron. It was 
(and is) precisely because so many men admire 
the foolish in girlhood that at least an equal 
number deplore the intolerable in wives. Dolly 
is a sort of kitten. This comparison is used 
by George Eliot of Hetty Sorrel, and George 
Eliot used it advisedly ; she knew very well 
indeed what comes of human kittenishness. 
The reader perhaps interposes, smilingly pro- 
tests, that this is considering altogether too 
curiously ; would hint, with civility, at a de- 
fect in appreciation of humour. But no ; 
Dickens's humour and delightfulness are as 
much to me as to any man living. For the 



200 CHARLES DICKENS 

moment, I write of him as the social historian 
of his day, and endeavour to disclose his real 
thoughts concerning women. To Dickens, 
Dolly Varden was an ideal maiden ; one, to 
be sure, of several ideals which haunt the 
young man*s brain. It is nothing to him that 
Dolly is totally without education, and that 
her mother's failings are traceable first and fore- 
most to that very source. Instruction was 
needless for sweet seventeen ; it tended, if 
anything, to blue-stockingism. Dolly's busi- 
ness in graver hours is to look after stockings 
of a more common hue. For relaxation, she 
may smirk and simper and tell little fibs, and 
smile treacherous little smiles, and on occa- 
sion drop a little tear, which means nothing 
but pique or selfish annoyance. This is the 
very truth of Dolly. But she wore a deli- 
cious hat, and had a dainty little mouth, and 
was altogether so very kittenish ; and to the 
end of time poor Gabriel Varden, poor Joe 
Willet, will find these things irresistible. 

Passing to a book written nearly a quarter 
of a century after Barnahy Rudge, I discover 
Dolly in a new incarnation ; she has learnt 
somewhat, she obeys a stricter rule of deco- 
rum, and her name is now Bella Wilfer. I 
admit that Miss Wilfer belongs to a slightly, 
very slightly, higher grade of society, but in 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 201 

those five-and-twenty years all things had ad- 
vanced. Of Bella one easily grants the charm, 
and one admires her for not being more spoilt 
by good fortune ; we perceive, however, the 
old traits ; we tremble, now and then, at lurk- 
ing kittenlshness. It is permitted us to behold 
Bella as wife and mother, and we see her doing 
well in both relations; but the peril is not 
past. There will come a day when her hus- 
band is less fascinated by pretty ways, when he 
wants a little intellectual companionship by 
his fireside, and that moment must test Bella's 
metal. Dolly would have made hopeless fail- 
ure, reproducing Mrs. Varden in the sourest 
particulars. Bella, perchance, had her self- 
respect strengthened by the example of her 
time, and fought down the worst of the 
feminine. 

Between Barnaby and Our Mutual Friend^ 
Dickens had portrayed many girls. Early 
come the daughters of Mr. Pecksniff, Charity 
and Mercy, "not unholy names, I hope." 
They are masterpieces, finished to the nail. 
Here — I cannot remind the reader too often 
of this fact in regard to Dickens's women — 
one discerns absolutely nothing of " exaggera- 
tion ; " not a word, not a gesture, goes beyond 
the very truth. Here the master would have 
nothing to learn from later art ; he is the real- 



202 CHARLES DICKENS 

ist's exemplar. How admirably are these sis- 
ters likened and contrasted ! That Jonas 
Chuzzlewit's wife becomes broken in spirit, 
meek, morally hopeful, is no instance of such 
literary optimism as one has noticed elsewhere, 
but a strict development of character. Her 
sister's rancorous appetency, with its train of 
consequences, belongs no less to nature. The 
artist must glory in these figures, so represen- 
tative, so finely individualized. Public merri- 
ment has, of course, done them only the 
scantiest justice ; their value cannot be ap- 
praised in laughter. They are among the 
most precious things left to us by early 
Victorian literature. 

Together with them, let me speak of Fanny 
Dorrit. In the London of to-day there is a 
very familiar female type, known as the shop- 
girl. Her sphere of action is extensive, for 
we meet her not only in shops, strictly speak- 
ing, but at liquor-bars, in workrooms, and, 
unfortunately, sometimes in the post-ofiice, to 
say nothing of fifty other forms of employment 
open to the underbred, and more or less 
aggressive, young woman. Dickens saw noth- 
ing like so much of her, but he has drawn 
her portrait, with unerring hand, in Fanny 
Dorrit. Her first characteristic is a paltry and 
ignorant ambition, of course allied with vanity ; 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 203 

she Is crudely selfish, and has only the elemen- 
tary scruples of her sex. Withal, there glim- 
mers in her, under favouring circumstance, a 
vulgar good-nature ; If she has much to spare 
she will bestow it upon those she likes, and at 
all times she prefers to see cheerfulness around 
her. In a time of social transition, when the 
womankind of labourer and office-man tend to 
intermingle, and together gall the kibes of the 
daughters of quick-growing capital, Fanny be- 
comes a question. It is not easy to get her 
taught, either in literature or good manners ; 
it is not easy to recompense her services, such 
as they are, on a scale which makes her free 
of the temptation ever present to this class. 
When she marries, her knowledge of domestic 
duties is found to be on a par, say, with that 
of a newspaper-boy ; her Ideas as to expendi- 
ture resemble those of a prima donna. Miss 
Dorrit, we know, had an unhappy training ; 
but not worse in degree, though diflferent in 
kind, from that of her modern parallel. 
Dickens did not know how significant was the 
picture when working at its details In the year 
of the Crimean War. Before his death he 
must have had many opportunities of recalling, 
and reflecting upon, the features of that young 
person. 

It occurs to one how little love-making 



204 CHARLES DICKENS 

there is in all his books. This results, in part, 
from the fact of his dealing with a class which is 
anything but sentimental, and as little endowed 
with imagination as any order of civilized be- 
ings discoverable throughout the world ; partly, 
again, from his own practical nature. Little 
Dorrit has her love story, and at one moment 
it is well told ; the chapter describing her travel 
in Italy deserves high praise. But, on the 
whole. Little Dorrit is not a success in char- 
acterization. Florence Dombey is, no doubt, 
in love, but we never think of it as more than 
the affection of a child ; one forms no image 
whatever of her married life with Walter Gay. 
Then there is the shadowy betrothed of Richard 
Carstone, a good girl, to be sure, but remark- 
ably placid. Esther Summerson cannot count, 
she has no existence. A favourite with readers 
of her own sex is Lizzie Hexam, and, putting 
aside her impossibility, Dickens has perhaps 
made her his most sympathetic love-heroine. 
One credits her with loyalty, with ardour; 
she is more nearly a poetical figure than that 
of any other girl in his books. Of Little 
Emily I find it difficult to say more than had 
its place in a previous chapter. She belongs 
to the stage, where such a story as hers is 
necessarily presented in the falsest possible 
light. Let us note one thing, however. Out 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 205 

of regard for what we call propriety, is it not 
obvious that this girl is shown to us as acting 
with something like cold-blooded deliberation, 
the simplest form of true immorality? We 
have no hint of her temptation, and it really 
looks very much as if she had calculated the 
probable advantages of flight with Steerforth. 
I have always felt the same with regard to the 
central incident of Adam Bede ; it comes upon 
one, at the first reading, as a moral shock. So 
determined are these novelists not to offend 
our precious delicacy, that in the upshot they 
offend it beyond endurance, springing upon us, 
so to speak, the results of uncontrollable pas- 
sion, without ever allowing us to suspect that 
such a motive was in play. The effect of this 
is a sort of grossness, which dishonours our 
heroine. So far as we are permitted to judge, 
there is much reason in the insults hurled at 
Emily by the frantic Rosa Dartle — a pretty 
result, indeed, of all our author's delicate glid- 
ing over slippery places. 

The Emperor Augustus, we are told, ob- 
jected to the presence of women at the public 
games when athletes appeared unclad ; but he 
saw nothing improper in their watching the 
death combats of gladiators. May we not find 
a parallel to this in the English censorship ? 
To exhibit the actual course of things in a 



2o6 CHARLES DICKENS 

story of lawless (nay, or of lawful) love is 
utterly forbidden ; on the other hand, a novelist 
may indulge in ghastly bloodshed to any ex- 
tent of which his stomach is capable. Dickens, 
the great writer, even appears on a public plat- 
form and recites with terrible power the mur- 
der of a prostitute by a burglar, yet no voice 
is raised in protest. Gore is perfectly decent ; 
but the secrets of an impassioned heart are too 
shameful to come before us even in a whisper. 

On this account I do not think it worth 
while to speak of Nancy, or of other lost crea- 
tures appearing in Dickens. But read, I beg, 
that passage of Little Dorrit where Amy her- 
self and her idiot friend Maggy, wandering 
about the streets at night, are addressed by a 
woman of the town (Book I. chap, xiv.) ; 
read that passage and wonder that the same 
man who penned this shocking rubbish could 
have written in the same volume pages of a 
truthfulness beyond all eulogy. 

Little Em'ly has, after all, but a subordinate 
part in David Copperjield, The leading lady is 
Dora. Dora is wooed, Dora is wed — the 
wooing and wedding of a butterfly. Yet it is 
Dickens^s prettiest bit of love, and I shall 
scarce find it in my heart to criticize the " little 
Blossom," the gauze-winged fairy of that " in- 
substantial, happy, foolish time." Dora is 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 207 

Dolly Varden volatilized ; every fault is there, 
prevented from becoming vice only by utter 
lack of purpose. The feather-brained little 
creature has no responsibility ; as reasonably 
would one begin to argue with her toy dog, 
Gip, when he takes his stand on the cookery 
book. I have said that we cannot look in 
Copperfield for any true picture of an author's 
daily life ; but, worse than that, we have very 
comical misrepresentation. Think only of 
David at his desk and Dora holding the pens ! 
Pray, how much work was our friend likely to 
get through with that charming assistance ? 
But it is all a fantasy and defies the test of 
common daylight. Take Dora seriously, and 
at once you are compelled to ask by what right 
an author demands your sympathy for such 
a brainless, nerveless, profitless simpleton. 
Enter into the spirit of the chapter, and you 
are held by one of the sweetest dreams of 
humour and tenderness ever translated into 
language. 

There is no better illustration of Dickens's 
progress with the time than a comparison of 
his heroine in Edwin Drood with those of the 
early books. I think it a great misfortune 
that we so abruptly lost sight of Rosa Bud ; 
if, as seemed hkely, the development of her 
character was to go on throughout the story. 



2o8 CHARLES DICKENS 

she would have been by far the best of 
Dickens's intelligent and sympathetic women. 
At first we have misgivings ; Dolly Varden 
and Dora and others of our old acquaintances 
seem blended in Miss Twinkleton*s pupil ; a 
tricksy and provoking little person, whose rea- 
son for not knowing her own mind is probably 
the old one — that she has no mind to know. 
But presently we understand ; the girl — little 
more than a child — is in a false position, and 
suffers under it very consciously. A few pages 
more, and we see her behaving with rational 
force of character, the silly prettiness is thrown 
aside ; Rosa declares herself as sensible and 
just and kind a girl as one could wish to meet. 
In the days of Copperfield^ Dickens could not 
have managed this characterization ; in the 
days oi Barnaby Rudge he could as soon have 
created Rosalind. Change of times, growth of 
experience, widening of artistic consciousness 
and power — all are evident in this study 
which was never to be completed. He laughs 
at Miss Twinkleton and her establishment, but 
we have an assurance that Rosa Bud was re- 
ceiving a much better education than fell to the 
lot of girls thirty years before ; even as we feel 
convinced that Mr. Crisparkle's tuition was a 
vast improvement upon that of Dr. Blimber. 
It is possible, of course, that Edwin Drood's 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 209 

paltry " mystery," with its blood and opium, 
would have ousted Rosa from the scene ; per- 
haps we had seen the best of her. None the 
less, she remains a real and interesting little 
woman, and we should much have liked to 
watch the course of her affection for Tartar. 

A " little woman." The phrase is inevitable 
in speaking of Dickens's pets. A Lady Ded- 
lock might have stature ; a Betsy Trotwood 
even might be of average height ; but Em'ly 
and Amy and Ruth, Dolly and Dora and 
Esther, must all be tiny vessels for their great 
virtues. Shakespeare took another view of 
this matter ; but Shakespeare was not con- 
cerned with the lower middle-class of the nine- 
teenth century. There is agreement, I am 
told, among trustworthy observers that the 
stature of English women has notably increased 
during the last two' or three decades ; a natural 
consequence of improvement in the conditions 
of their Hfe. In Dickens's day, when girls 
took no sort of exercise, fed badly, and (amid 
London streets) never breathed fresh air, of 
course they were generally diminutive. And 
among all the little women he presents to us, 
who exhibits more concentrated charm of little- 
ness than Ruth Pinch .? 

I have left her to the last, because she will 
serve us as the type of all that Dickens really 

14 



2IO CHARLES DICKENS 

admired in woman. Truth to tell, it was no 
bad ideal. Granted that the world must go on 
very much in the old way, that children must 
be born and looked after, that dinners must be 
cooked, that houses must be kept sweet, it is 
hard to see how Ruth Pinch can ever be sup- 
planted. Ruth is no imbecile — your thor- 
oughly kind-hearted and home-loving woman 
never will be ; with opportunities, she would 
learn much, even beyond domestic limits, and 
still would delight in her dainty little aprons, 
her pastry-board and roller. Ruth would be 
an excellent mother ; when, in the latter days, 
she sat grey-haired and spectacled, surely would 
her children arise and call her blessed. A 
very homely little woman, to be sure. She 
could not be quite comfortable with domestics 
at her command; a little house, a little gar- 
den, the cooking her own peculiar care, a little 
maid for the little babies — this is her dream. 
But never, within those walls, a sound of com- 
plaining or of strife, never a wry face, acidly 
discontented with the husband's doings or say- 
ings. Upon my word — is it a bad ideal ? 

There are who surmise that in the far-off 
time when girls are universally well-taught, 
when it is the exception to meet, in any class, 
with the maiden or the wife who deems herself 
a natural inferior of brother, lover, husband, 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 211 

the homely virtues of Ruth Pinch will be even 
more highly rated than in the stupid old world. 
There are who suspect that our servant-question 
foretells a radical change in ways of thinking 
about the life of home ; that the lady of a 
hundred years hence will be much more com- 
petent and active in cares domestic than the 
average shop-keeper's wife to-day ; that it may 
not be found impossible to turn from a page 
of Sophocles to the boiling of a potato, or 
even the scrubbing of a floor. If every spend- 
thrift idiot of a mistress, and every lying lazy- 
bones of a kitchen-wench, were swept into 
Time's dustbin, it might come to pass that a 
race of brave and intelligent women will smile 
sister-like at this portrait of little Ruth. They 
will prize Dickens, instead of turning from him 
in disgust or weariness ; for in his pages they 
will see that ancjent deformity of their sex, and 
will recognize how justly he pointed out the way 
of safe reform ; no startling innovation, no ex- 
travagant ideaUsm, but a gentle insistence on 
the facts of human nature, a kindly glorifying 
of one humble little woman, who saw her duty, 
and did it singing the while. 

A word or two about the children whom he 
loved to bring Into his books, and to make 
pathetic or amusing. First, of course, we see 
Little Nell ; we see her, because she Is the mid- 



212 CHARLES DICKENS 

figure in a delightful romance ; but her face is 
not very plain to us. She Is innocence walking 
among grotesque forms of suffering and wrong ; 
simplicity set amid quaint contortions. Her 
death is not the dying of a little girl, but the 
vanishing of a beautiful dream. Oliver Twist 
is no more real, and certainly less Interesting. 
Into what sort of man did this astonishing 
lad develop ? The children of Dotheboys are 
writhing ghosts ; perhaps they had lived in 
some other world, and were bad boys, and 
afterwards came into Squeers's hands for purifi- 
cation. Sally Brass's poor little slavey is, on 
the other hand, well realized ; a good study of 
childhood brought to the verge of idiocy by 
evil treatment. Tiny Tim serves his admirable 
purpose in a book which no one can bear to 
criticize ; we know that he did die, but in his little 
lifetime he has softened many a heart. Next 
rises the son and heir of" our friend Dombey." 
Dickens believed that little Paul was one of the 
best things he had ever done ; contemporary 
readers were much excited about the child, 
whose "old-fashioned" ways became a bye- 
word. I do not find it difficult to accept PauFs 
inquiry about what the waves were saying (in 
spite of a most dreadful song, made of that 
passage, which sounds in my ears from long 
ago), and of a surety I give more credit to 



WOMEN AND CHILDREN 213 

Paul's deathbed speeches than to those of the 
child in Our Mutual Friend^ who bequeathed a 
kiss to " the booful lady ; '* but on the whole, 
Mr. Dombey's hope has only a little more of 
substance than Little Nell. His sister Florence 
is prettiness and gentleness ; an abstraction 
which affects us not. Passing to young David 
Copperfield, it is a different matter. Here we 
have the author's vision of his own childhood, 
and he makes it abundantly convincing. This 
part of Copperjield is one of the narratives which 
every reader illustrates for himself; the poor 
little lad stands plain before us, as we read, and 
in our memory. The picture, I should say, 
suggests very faithfully an artist's early years, 
his susceptibility, his abnormal faculty of ob- 
servation, the vivid workings of his mind 
and heart. Dickens told Forster that this bit 
of autobiography .might be worthy to stand on 
the shelf together with the corresponding part 
of that written by Holcroft. Holcroft Is for- 
gotten, I suppose ; If the mention of him leads 
a stray reader to his book, that reader's time 
will not be wasted. 

Of Dickens's true and deep sympathy with 
childhood, there can be no doubt ; It becomes 
passionate In the case of little ones doomed to 
suffering by a cruel or careless world. In all 
his excellent public speeches, perhaps the best 



214 CHARLES DICKENS 

and most moving passage is that which describes 
a poor baby he saw in Scotland, a wasting little 
mortal, whose cradle was an old egg-box; 
where, he says, it lay dumb and pitiful, its eyes 
seeming to wonder " why, in the name of an 
All-merciful God, such things should be/* 
In his novels, we like those children best, of 
whom we obtain only a passing glimpse, the 
reason, again, being that remorseless necessity 
of drama which spoils so many of his older 
people. But in one case he has written a whole 
story about children, and these toddlers the 
most lifelike to be found in his pages. It is 
the story put into the mouth of Boots at the 
Holly Tree. Accept the fantasy, and these 
little actors are wonderfully well shown ; their 
talk is true, their behaviour — down to the 
crossness of the bride-elect when she gets tired 
— as truly observed as it is mirth-provoking. 
No wonder that Boots at the Holly Tree was 
one of the " readings " most acceptable to 
Dickens^s audience. If he must needs read in 
public, he could not have chosen a piece more 
likely to keep sweet his personal memory with 
those who heard him. 



CHAPTER VIII 

HUMOUR AND PATHOS 

To write of Dickens at all, is to presuppose 
his humour. The plan of my essay has neces- 
sitated a separate consideration of the various 
features of his work, and at moments it may 
have appeared that I found fault without 
regard to a vast counterbalance ; but it was 
never possible for me to lose sight of that 
supreme quality of his genius which must be 
now dwelt upon with undivided attention. It 
was as a humorist that Dickens made his name ; 
and in a retrospect of his life's activity one 
perceives that his most earnest purposes de- 
pended for their furtherance upon this genial 
power, which he shares with nearly all the 
greatest of English writers. Holding, as he 
did, that the first duty of an author is to in- 
fluence his reader for good, Dickens neces- 
sarily esteemed as the most precious of his 
gifts that by virtue of which he commanded so 
great an audience. Without his humour, he 
might have been a vigorous advocate of social 



2i6 CHARLES DICKENS 

reform, but as a novelist assuredly he would 
have failed ; and as to the advocacy of far- 
reaching reforms by men who have only 
earnestness and eloquence to work with, Eng- 
lish history tells its tale. Only because they 
laughed with him so heartily, did multitudes 
of people turn to discussing the question his 
page suggested. As a story-teller pure and 
simple, the powers that remain to him, if 
humour be subtracted, would never have en- 
sured popularity. Nor, on the other hand, 
would they have availed him in the struggle 
for artistic perfection, which is a better thing. 
Humour is the soul of his work. Like the 
soul of man, it permeates a living fabric which, 
but for its creative breath, could never have 
existed. 

In his earliest writing we discover only the 
suggestion of this quality. The Sketches have 
a touch of true humour, but (apart from the 
merits of acute observation and great descrip- 
tive power) there is much more of merely 
youthful high spirits, tending to the farcical. 
Such a piece as The Tuggs at Ramsgate is dis- 
tinct farce, and not remarkably good of its 
kind. This vein Dickens continued to work 
throughout his career, and often with great 
success. One must distinguish between the 
parts of his writing which stir to mere hilarity, 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 217 

and his humour in the strict sense of the word. 
It is none of my business to define that term, 
which has long ago been adequately expounded ; 
enough that the humorist has by no means 
invariably a chuckle in his throat ; at moments 
of his supreme success, he will hardly move 
us to more of merriment than appears in a 
thoughtful smile. But there is a perfectly 
legitimate, and tolerably wide, range for the 
capers of a laughing spirit, and as a writer of 
true farce I suppose Dickens has never been 
surpassed. Pickwick abounds in it, now quite 
distinct from, and now all but blending with, 
the higher characteristic. One can imagine 
that the public approval of his Sketches had 
given the author an impetus which carried 
him of a sudden into regions of extravagant 
buoyancy and mirthfulness. The first few 
pages are farce^ of the frankest. Winkle, 
Snodgrass, and Tupman remain throughout 
farcical characters, but not so Mr. Pickwick 
himself Farce is the election at Eatanswill, 
and the quarrel of the rival Editors, and many 
another well-remembered passage. Only a 
man of genius has the privilege of being so 
emphatically young. "Though the merri- 
ment was rather boisterous, still it came from 
the heart and not from the lips; and this is 
the right sort of merriment after all." How 



2i8 CHARLES DICKENS 

could one better describe, than in these words 
from the book itself, that overflowing cheeri- 
ness which conquered Dickens's first public? 
Or take the description of old Wardle coming 
through the early sunshine to bid Mr. Pick- 
wick good morning, — " out of breath with 
his own anticipations of pleasure/* Alas ! old 
gentlemen, however jolly, do not get breath- 
less in this fashion ; but the young may, and 
Dickens, a mere boy himself, was writing for 
the breathless boyhood of many an age to 
come. 

The farce In his younger work always results 
from this exuberance of spirits ; later, he intro- 
duces it deliberately ; with conscious art — save 
perhaps at those moments when the impulse of 
satire is too much for him. One easily recalls 
his best efforts in this direction. The wild 
absurdity of the Muffin Company at the begin- 
ning of Nickleby shows him still in his boyish 
mood, and the first chapter of Chuzzlewit finds 
him unluckily reverting to it at the moment 
when he was about to produce a masterpiece of 
genuine humour. Mr. Mantalini is capital fun ; 
he never quite loses his hold upon one, and to 
the end we shall laugh over the " demnition 
egg " and the " demnition bow-wows." At 
this stage Dickens was capable of a facetious- 
ness of descriptive phrase which hints the peril 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 219 

involved In a reputation such as he had won. 
" Madame Mantalini wrung her hands for grief 
and rung the bell for her husband ; which done, 
she fell into a chair and a fainting fit simulta- 
neously/' When he had written that passage, 
and allowed it to stand, his genius warned him ; 
I remember nothing so dangerous in after time. 
Quilp, at his best, Is rich entertainment ; in 
Dick Swiveller we touch higher things. The 
scene between little David Copperfield and the 
waiter (chap, v.) seems to me farce, though 
very good ; country innkeepers were never in 
the habit of setting a dish-load of cutlets before 
a little boy who wanted dinner, and not even 
the shrewdest of waiters, having devoured them 
all, could make people believe that it was the 
little boy's achievement ; but the comic vigour 
of the thing is irresistible. Better still is the 
forced marriage of Jack Bunsby to the great 
M^Stinger. Here, I think, Dickens reaches his 
highest point. We cannot call it " screaming" 
farce ; it appeals not only to the groundlings. 
Laughter holding both his sides was never 
more delightfully justified ; gall and the me- 
grims were never more effectually dispelled. 
It is the ludicrous In its purest form, tainted 
by no sort of unkindliness, and leaving behind 
it nothing but the healthful aftertaste of self- 
forgetful mirth. 



220 CHARLES DICKENS 

We may notice how Dickens makes use of 
farcical extravagance to soften the bitterness of 
truth. When Sally Brass goes down into- the 
grimy cellar-kitchen to give the little slavey 
her food, we are told that she cut from the 
joint " two square inches of cold mutton," and 
bade her victim never say that she had not had 
meat in that house. This makes one laugh ; 
who can refrain ? If he had avoided exaggera- 
tion, and shown us the ragged, starving child 
swallowing the kind of meal which was really 
set before her, who could have endured it? 
The point is vastly important for an under- 
standing of Dickens's genius and his popularity. 
That "two square inches" makes all the differ- 
ence between painful realism and fiction univer- 
sally acceptable ; it is the secret of Dickens's 
power for good. Beside it may be set another 
instance. Judy Smallweed, in Bleak House^ 
likewise has her little slavey over whom she 
tyrannizes ; a child, too, who has won our sym- 
pathy in a high degree, and whom we could not 
bear to see brutally used. She is brutally used ; 
but then Jildy Smallweed is a comical figure ; 
so comical that no one takes her doings with 
seriousness. Harsh words and broken meats 
are again provocative of laughter, when in very 
truth we should sob. With Dickens's end in 
view, how wise his method ! After merriment 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 221 

comes the thought : but what a shame ! And 
henceforth the reader thinks sympathetically of 
poor little girls whether ruled by vicious trol- 
lops or working under easier conditions. Omit 
the jest — and the story becomes too unpleas- 
ant to remember. 

Between Dickens's farce and his scenes of 
humour the difference is obvious. In Manta- 
lini or Jack Bunsby we have nothing illumina- 
tive ; they amuse, and there the matter ends. 
But true humour always suggests a thought, 
always throws light on human nature. The 
humorist may not be fully conscious of his 
own meaning ; he always, indeed, implies more 
than he can possibly have thought out; and 
therefore it is that we find the best humour 
inexhaustible, ever fresh when we return to it, 
ever, as our knowledge of life increases, more 
suggestive of wisdom. 

Both the Weliers are creations strictly hu- 
morous. For one thing, each is socially repre- 
sentative ; each, moreover, is a human type, 
for ever recognizable beneath time's disguises. 
Be it noticed that neither the old coachman 
nor his son is ever shown in a grotesque, or 
improbable, situation ; there is no cutting of 
capers, even when they make us laugh the 
loudest. The fantastic is here needless; nature 
has wrought with roguish intention, and we 



222 CHARLES DICKENS 

are aware of it at every moment of their com- 
mon life. No one takes Mantalini to his 
heart ; but Tony and Sam become in very 
truth our friends, and for knowing them, im- 
probable as it might seem, we know ourselves 
the better. They are surprising incarnations 
of the spirit of man, which is doomed to inhabit 
so variously. The joke consists in perceiving 
how this spirit adjusts itself to an odd situation, 
reconciles itself with queerest circumstance. 
In old Weller, it is a matter of stress ; his 
difficulties, never too severe, bring out the quaint 
philosophy of the man, and set us smiling in 
fellowship. Sam, at ease in the world, makes 
life his jest, and we ask nothing better than to 
laugh with one who sees so shrewdly, feels so 
honestly. Sam cannot away with a humbug — 
in this respect, Dickens's own child. Put him 
face to face with Job Trotter, and how his 
countenance shines, how his tongue is loosed ! 
It is a great part of Sam's business in life to 
come into genial conflict with Job Trotter ; his 
weapon of mockery is in the end irresistible, 
and a Cockney serving-man strikes many a 
stroke for the good of human-kind. Of course 
he does not know it ; that is our part, as we 
look on, and feel in our hearts the warmth of 
kindly merriment and give thanks to the great 
humorist who teaches us so much. 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 223 

To survey all his humorous characters would 
be to repeat, in substance, the same remarks 
again and again. I have no space for a dis- 
cussion, from this point of view, of the figures 
which have already passed before us. But of 
Mrs. Gamp one word. She sometimes comes 
into my thought together with FalstafF, and I 
am tempted to say that there is a certain pro- 
priety in the association. Where else since 
Shakespeare shall we find such force in the 
humorous presentment of gross humanity ? 
The two figures, of course, stand on different 
planes. In Falstaif, intellect and breeding are 
at issue with the flesh, however sorely worsted ; 
in Sarah Gamp, little intellect and less breed- 
ing are to be looked for, and the flesh has its 
way ; but I discover some likeness of character. 
If Betsy Prig's awful assertion regarding Mrs. 
Harris must be held as proved, is there not a 
hint of resemblance between the mood that 
elaborated this delicious fiction and the temper 
native to the hero of Gadshill ? A fancy ; let 
it pass. But to my imagination the thick- 
tongued, leering, yet half-genial woman walks 
as palpably in Kingsgate Street as yon moun- 
tain of a man in Eastcheap. The literary 
power exhibited in one and the other portrait 
is of the same kind; the same perfect method of 
idealism is put to use in converting to a source 



224 CHARLES DICKENS 

of pleasure things that in life repel or nauseate ; 
and in both cases the sublimation of character, 
of circumstance, is effected by a humour which 
seems unsurpassable. 

From a mention of Mrs. Harris, one passes 
very naturally to Spenlow and Jorkins — an 
only less happy bit of humour. Of course 
it was taken straight from life ; we know that 
without any authority ; at this moment, be 
sure of it, more than one Mr. Spenlow is ex- 
cusing his necessity or his meanness with the 
plea of Mr. Jorkins* inflexibility. But only 
the man of genius notes such a thing, and 
records it for ever among human traits. 

Very rich is Dickens's humour in those 
passages which serve rather as illustrations of 
manners than of individual character. Take 
the scene at Mrs. Kenwig's confinement ; a 
shining chapter in the often weak and crude 
pages of Nickleby. So quietly it is done, yet 
so vividly; never a note of the extravagant; 
every detail of the scene set before us as it 
must have been shown in fact, but invested 
with such mirthful significance. Or, again, 
i;he servants* hall at Mr. Dombey's ; so much 
better, because done with so much geniality, 
than the life that went on upstairs. Or Mr. 
Smallwood giving his friend Jobling a dinner 
at the chop-house ; where we hear the chink 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 225 

of plates and glasses, and feel hungry at 
Jobling s acceptance of each new succulent 
suggestion, and see the law-clerk's wink as he 
reckons up with Polly the waitress. Among 
things supreme stands " Todgers's." When- 
ever I chance to come within sight of the 
Monument, it is not of the fire of London 
that I think, but of Todgers's ; one feels that 
the house must be still existing, discoverable 
by sufficiently earnest search. It is inconceiv- 
able that any age which has not outgrown our 
language should forget this priceless descrip- 
tion ; every line close-packed with humorous 
truth. And how generous the scale ! Here 
is no "hitting off" in a page or so; abroad 
canvas filled with detail that never tires, and 
no touch ever superfluous. Not only are the 
inhabitants of Todgers's made real to us, col- 
lectively and .individually, by the minutest 
portraiture ; but the very fabric and its furni- 
ture fix themselves in the mind, so described 
that each room, each table, becomes symbolic, 
instinct with a meaning which the ordinary 
observer would never have suspected. The 
grim old city of London has of a sudden re- 
vealed to us a bit of its very self, and we see 
in it a museum of human peculiarities, foibles, 
and vices. There this little group of people 
lives squeezed amid the brick and mortar 

IS 



226 CHARLES DICKENS 

labyrinth; each so vastly important to him- 
self, so infinitesimal in the general view. 
They remind us of busy ants, running about 
with what seems such ridiculous earnestness ; 
yet we know that their concerns are ours, and 
turn from laughing at them — to go and do 
likewise. 

The subtlest bit of humour in all Dickens's 
books is, to my mind, that scene I have 
already mentioned as a triumph of characteri- 
zation, the Father of the Marshalsea enter- 
taining his old pensioner Nandy. But public 
favour turns to pictures of life that have more 
familiarity. Dickens was always happy when 
dealing with that common object of his time 

— nothing like so common nowadays — the 
travelling show ; were it dramatic, or eques- 
trian, waxworks, or Punch and Judy. From 
Mr. Crummies and his troupe in Nickleby 
down to Chops the Dwarf in a story written 
for All the Tear Rounds he never failed in 
such humorous picturing. Codlin and Short 
are typical instances. These figures never 
become farcical ; they are always profoundly 
true, and amuse by pure virtue of their human- 
ity. Akin to this order of beings is another 
with which he had remarkable acquaintance 

— the inn waiter. Read again (or only too 
possibly read for the first time) the waiter's 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 227 

autobiography in Somebody s Luggage, Here 
is no satire, but very fact made vocal ; made, 
at the same time, such a delightful example 
of unconscious self-disclosure that we cannot 
sufficiently wonder at the author's sympathetic 
knowledge. 

No one has equalled him in bringing out 
the humours of stupidity. One of his mas- 
terpieces is old Willet, the landlord of the 
Maypole. Willet is all but a born idiot, in 
the proper sense of the word; and that "all 
but " becomes in Dickens's hand the oppor- 
tunity for elaborate portraiture. You may 
compare the man with the weakest-minded of 
Dickens's lower class women (whichever that 
may be), and find in the parallel a rich subject 
of speculation. Being masculine, Willet is 
sparing of his words ; his great resource is a 
blank stare of imbecile resentment, implying 
an estimate of his own importance at which the 
very gods might stand fixed between amaze 
and laughter. Inimitable the skill with which 
this asserter of human dignity is shown at last 
suffering from mental shock — a shock so 
severe that it all but reduces him to the con- 
dition of a dumb mute. We had thought it 
impossible that he could fall intellectually 
lower ; when it comes, we can only acknowl- 
edge the author's reserve of power. There 



228 CHARLES DICKENS 

he sits, amid the wreck of his fine old inn, 
staring at his old-time companion, the kitchen 
boiler. Seeing him thus, we have it brought 
to mind that he really was, in his way, a capa- 
ble landlord, and had kept the Maypole spick 
and span for many a long year ; which possibly 
suggests an aspect of English character, and 
English conservatism, not out of keeping with 
some of Dickens's views on such subjects. 

I must not omit mention of those sketches 
of genuine grotesques — not Quilp-like ex- 
travagances — which now and then flash upon 
us at some odd moment of the story ; wonders 
of swift character-drawing, and instinct with 
humour. The finest examples I can remem- 
ber are the figure of Mr. Nadgett, in Chuz- 
zlewit (chap, xxvii.), and that of the old 
woman called Tamaroo, in the same book 
(chap, xxxii.). Language cannot do more in the 
calling up of a vivid image before the mind ; 
and how much of this result is traceable to the 
writer's humorous insight. There could be no 
better illustration of the difference between 
Dickens's grasp and presentment of a bit of hu- 
man nature, a bit of observable fact, and that 
method which the critics of to-day, inaccurately 
but intelligibly, call photographic. Nadgett, 
the tracker of sordid mysteries, and Tamaroo, 
successor of young Bailey at Todgers's, acquire 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS i 



29 



an imaginative importance like in kind (how- 
ever different in degree) to that of the grand- 
est figures in fiction. Every stroke of such 
outHnes is a manifestation of genius. 

Inseparable from the gift of humour is 
that of pathos. It was Dickens's misfortune 
that, owing to habits of his mind already suffi- 
ciently discussed, he sometimes elaborated pa- 
thetic scenes, in the theatrical sense of the word. 
I do not attribute to him the cold insincerity so 
common in the work of playwrights ; but at 
times he lost self-restraint and unconsciously 
responded to the crude ideals of a popular 
audience. Emphasis and reiteration, however 
necessary for such hearers, were out of place 
in pathetic narrative. Thus it comes about 
that he is charged with mawkishness, and we 
hear of some who greatly enjoy his humour 
rapidly turning 'the pages meant to draw a 
tear. Chiefly, I suppose, it is the death of 
Paul Dombey that such critics have in mind ; 
they would point also to the death of Jo, the 
crossing-sweeper, and to that of Little Nell. 
On a re-perusal of these chapters, I feel that 
nothing can be said in defence of Jo ; on his 
death-bed he is an impossible creature, and 
here for once moral purpose has been unde- 
niably fatal to every quality of art. Regard- 
ing the other narratives, it strikes me that they 



230 CHARLES DICKENS 

have been too hastily condemned. The one 
line which describes the death of PauFs mother 
IS better, no doubt, than the hundreds through 
which we follow the fading of Paul himself; 
but these pages I cannot call mawkish, for I 
do not feel that they are flagrantly untrue. 
The tear may rise or not — that depends upon 
how we are constituted — but we are really 
standing by the bed of a gentle little child, 
precociously gifted and cruelly over-wrought, 
and, if the situation is to be presented at all, 
it might be much worse done. Such pathos 
is called " cheap." I can only repeat that in 
Dickens's day, the lives, the happiness of 
children were very cheap indeed, and that he 
had his purpose in insisting on their claims to 
attention. As for the heroine of The Old 
Curiosity Shopy distaste for her as a pathetic 
figure seems to me unintelligent. She is a 
child of romance ; her death is purely symboli- 
cal, signifying the premature close of any sweet, 
innocent, and delicate life. Heaven forbid 
that I should attribute to Dickens a deliberate 
allegory ; but, having in mind those hapless 
children who were then being tortured in Eng- 
land's mines and factories, I like to see in 
Little Nell a type of their sufi^erings ; she, the 
victim of avarice, dragged with bleeding feet 
along the hard roads, ever pursued by heart- 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 231 

less self-interest, and finding her one safe refuge 
in the grave. Look back upon the close of 
that delightful novel, and who can deny its 
charm ? Something I shall have to say pres- 
ently about the literary style ; but as a story 
of peaceful death it is beautifully imagined and 
touchingly told. 

Of true pathos, Dickens has abundance. 
The earliest instance I can call to mind is the 
death of the Chancery prisoner in Pickwick, 
described at no great length, but very powerful 
over the emotions. It worthily holds a place 
amid the scenes of humour enriching that part 
of the book. We feel intensely the contrast 
between the prisoner's life and that which was 
going on in the free world only a few yards 
away ; we see in his death a pitifulness beyond 
words. A scene in another book, — Bleak 
House, — this, too, connected with that accursed 
system of imprisonment for debt, shows Dickens 
at his best in bringing out the pathos of child- 
life. The man known to Mr. Skimpole as 
" Coavinses " has died, and Coavinses' children, 
viewed askance by neighbours because of their 
father's calling, are living alone in a garret. 
They are presented as simply as possible — 
nothing here of stage emphasis — yet the eyes 
dazzle as we look. I must quote a line or two. 
" We were looking at one another," says 



232 CHARLES DICKENS 

Esther Summerson, " and at these two children, 
when there came into the room a very little 
girl, childish in figure but shrewd and older- 
looking in the face — pretty faced too — wear- 
ing a womanly sort of bonnet much too large 
for her, and drying her bare arms on a womanly 
sort of apron. Her fingers were white and 
wrinkled with washing, and the soapsuds were 
yet smoking which she wiped off her arms. 
But for this, she might have been a child play- 
ing at washing and imitating a poor working- 
woman with a quick observation of the truth." 
It is Charley, of course, who had found a way 
to support herself and the younger ones. We 
see how closely the true pathetic and a " quick 
observation " are allied. Another picture 
shown us in Esther's narrative, that of the 
baby's death in the starved labourer's cottage, 
moves by legitimate art. Still more of it is felt 
in the story of Doctor Marigold, the Cheap 
Jack, whose child is dying in his arms, whilst 
for daily bread he plays buffoon before the 
crowd. This is a noble piece of work and 
defies criticism. The tale is told by the man 
himself as simply as possible ; he never insists 
upon the pitifulness of his position. We hear 
his whispers to the child, between his hoarse 
professional shoutings and the guffaws in front ; 
then he finds his word of tenderness brings no 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 233 

response — he looks closer — he turns from 
the platform. A piece of work that might 
atone for literary sins far worse than Dickens 
ever committed. 

Liule Dorrit is strong in pathos, as in 
humour. Dickens's memories of childhood 
made his touch very sure whenever he dealt 
with the squalid prison-world, and life there 
was for him no less fertile in pathos than death. 
Very often it is inextricably blended with his 
humour ; in the details of the Marshalsea pic- 
ture, who shall say which element of his genius 
prevails ? Yet, comparing it with the corre- 
sponding scenes in Pickwick^ we perceive a 
subdual of tone, which comes not only of ad- 
vancing years, but of riper art ; and, as we 
watch the Dorrits step forth from the prison- 
door, it is in another mood than that which 
accompanied the. release of Mr. Pickwick. 
Pathos of this graver and subtler kind is the 
distinguishing note of Great Expectations^ a 
book which Dickens meant, and rightly meant, 
to end in the minor key. The old convict, 
Magwitch, if he cannot be called a tragical 
personality, has feeling enough to move the 
reader's deeper interest, and in the very end 
acquires through suffering a dignity which 
makes him very impressive. Rightly seen, is 
there not much pathos in the story of Pip's 



234 CHARLES DICKENS 

foolishness ? It would be more manifest if we 
could forget Lytton's imbecile suggestion, and 
restore the author's original close of the story. 

To the majority of readers it seemed — and 
perhaps still seems — that Dickens achieved 
his best pathos in the Christmas books. Two 
of those stories answered their purpose admi- 
rably ; the other two showed a flagging spirit ; 
but not even in the Carol can we look for any- 
thing to be seriously compared with the finer 
features of his novels. The true value of these 
little books lies in their deliberate illustration 
of a theme which occupied Dickens's mind 
from first to last. Writing for the season of 
peace, good- will, and jollity, he sets himself to 
exhibit these virtues in an idealization of the 
English home. The type of domestic beauty 
he finds, as a matter of course, beneath a hum- 
ble roof And we have but to glance in mem- 
ory through the many volumes of his life's 
work to recognize that his gentlest, brightest 
humour, his simplest pathos, occur in those 
unexciting pages which depict the everyday life 
of poor and homely English folk. This is 
Dickens's most delightful aspect, and I believe 
it is the most certainly enduring portion of 
what he has left us. 

His genius plays like a warm light on the 
characteristic aspects of homely England. Nq 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 235 

man ever loved England more; and the proof 
of it remains in picture after picture of her plain, 
old-fashioned life — in wayside inns and cot- 
tages, in little dwellings hidden amid the city's 
vastness and tumult, in queer musty shops, in 
booths and caravans. Finding comfort or 
jollity, he enjoys it beyond measure, he rubs 
his hands, he sparkles, he makes us laugh with 
him from the very heart. Coming upon hard- 
ship and woe, he is moved as nowhere else, 
holds out the hand of true brotherhood, tells 
to the world his indignation and his grief 
There would be no end of selecting passages 
in illustration, but we must recall a few for the 
mere pleasure of the thing. Try to imagine 
the warmest welcome of a cosy little inn, at the 
end of a long lonely road, on a night of foul 
weather ; you must needs have recourse to the 
Jolly Sandboys, .where Nell and her grandfather 
and the wandering showmen all found shelter. 
" There was a deep ruddy blush upon the room, 
and when the landlord stirred the fire, sending 
the flames skipping and leaping up — when he 
took off the lid of the iron pot, and there 
rushed out a savoury smell, while the bubbhng 
sound grew deeper and more rich, and an unc- 
tuous steam came floating out, hanging in a 
delicious mist above their heads — when he did 
this, Mr. Codlin's heart was touched " {Old 



236 CHARLES DICKENS 

Curiosity Shop, chap, xxviii.). And whose is 
not ? What dyspeptic exquisite but must 
laugh with appetite over such a description ? 

As good is the picture of Ruth Pinch at the 
butcher's. "To see him slap the steak before 
he laid it on the block, and give his knife a 
sharpening, was to forget breakfast instantly. 
It was agreeable, too — it really was — to see 
him cut it off, so smooth and juicy. There 
was nothing savage in the act. Although the 
knife was large and keen, it was a piece of high 
art . . . Perhaps the greenest cabbage leaf ever 
grown in a garden was wrapped about this steak 
before it was delivered over to Tom. But the 
butcher had a sentiment for his business, and 
knew how to refine upon it. When he saw 
Tom putting the cabbage-leaf into his pocket 
awkwardly, he begged to be allowed to do it 
for him ; ' for meat,' he said with some emotion, 
' must be humoured and not drove ' ! " (C/iuz- 
zlewity chap, xxxix.). Reading this, how does 
one regret that Dickens should have filled 
with melodrama many a page which might 
have been given to the commonest doings of 
the humble street ! 

There is a great chapter of The Old Curiosity 
Shop (chap. xxxix.),where Kit and Barbara, with 
their respective mothers, with little Jacob, too, 
and the Baby, go to spend the evening at 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 237 

Astley's. It would have seemed impossible 
to get so much kindly fun out of a group of 
the London poor. Dickens does it by dint 
of his profound, his overflowing sympathy with 
them. He glows with delight when they are 
delighted ; he understands precisely what they 
enjoy and why ; it does his very soul good to 
hear Kit's guffaws and the screaming laugh of 
little Jacob. Where else in literature is there 
such infinite good-feeling expressed with such 
wondrous whimsicality ? After the circus, Kit 
takes all his companions to have an oyster 
supper (by the way, in those days, as Sam 
Weller assures us, poverty and oysters always 
went together). And not one of them enjoyed 
the meal more than he who gaily described it. 
How the London poor should love Dickens ! 
But — with his books always obtainable — they 
can scarce be said- to read him at all. 

Remember that such' a scene as this was new 
in literature, a bold innovation. Dickens had 
no model to imitate when he sat down to tell 
of the joys of servant-lads and servant-girls 
with their washerwomen and sempstress mothers. 
But in spirit he continues the work of two 
writers whom he always held dear. Goldsmith 
and Sterne. Goldmith's sweetness and com- 
passion, Sterne's sensitive humanity, necessarily 
had their part, and that no small one, in form- 



238 CHARLES DICKENS 

ing Dickens. There is a foretaste of his hu- 
mour in Moses (" Boz," as we know), the son 
of the Vicar of Wakefield, and in the would-be 
fine company ; there is a palpable hint to him 
in the Vicar preaching among poor prisoners. 
Turning to Uncle Toby, to Corporal Trim, 
we are perforce reminded of those examples of 
grotesque goodness, of sweet humility under 
the oddest exteriors, upon which Dickens lav- 
ished his humour and his love. 

Captain Cuttle is as well known as any of 
them. In what terms of literary criticism shall 
one describe that scene {Dombeyy chap, xlix.) 
where the Captain sits in Solomon Gill's par- 
lour and Florence mixes his grog for him? 
It is a sort of fairy tale of modern life. No 
one can for a moment believe that two such 
persons ever were in such relations ; but so 
irrelevant an objection never occurs to us. All 
we know is, that a spell is laid upon us ; that 
we pass from smiles to laughter, and from 
laughter to smiles again. Who ever paused 
to think that the old coasting Captain, Mrs. 
M'Stinger's lodger, must have been in person 
and manners and speech not a little repulsive 
to a young lady straight from a great house in 
the west of London? It is not germane to 
the matter. These are actors in the world of 
humour and imagination, raised above the 



HUMOUR AND PATHOS 239 

unessentials of life. Dickens^s thought was to 
make a picture delightful to every heart which 
can enjoy fun, respect innocence, and sympa- 
thize with kindness. Moreover, he wished to 
point a contrast between the stately house, in- 
habited by wealth and pride, the atmosphere 
of which had grown poisonous from the evil 
passions nurtured in it ; and the little back 
parlour of a shop somewhere amid the City's 
noisiest streets, where the homeliest — and 
therefore the most precious — virtues have a 
secure abode. Fleeing from the home that is 
none, the mansion where her womanly instincts 
have been outraged, Florence betakes herself 
to this poor haven of refuge, and lives there 
guarded and honoured as any queen in her 
palace. What could make stronger appeal to 
the sensibilities of English readers ? No na- 
tional foible is here concerned : we respond 
with the very best that is in us. We feel that 
these are the ideals of English life. We are 
proud of the possibility underlying a fancy of 
such irresistible charm. 

For his own fame, Dickens, I think, never 
puts his genius to better use than in the ideal- 
ization of English life and character. What- 
ever in his work may be of doubtful interest to 
future time, here is its enduring feature. To 
be truly and profoundly national is great 



240 CHARLES DICKENS 

strength in the maker of literature. What a 
vast difference from all but every point of 
view between Dickens and Tennyson ; yet it 
is likely enough that these two may survive 
together as chosen writers of the Victorian age. 
They are at one in their English sentiment. 
They excite the same emotion whenever they 
speak of the English home ; none, I think, of 
their contemporaries touches so powerfully that 
island note. In Tennyson's glorious range, 
humour is not lacking ; it exercises itself on a 
theme of the most intimately national signifi- 
cance, and his Northern Farmer will live as 
long as the poet's memory. Of humour the 
very incarnation, Dickens cannot think of his 
country without a sunny smile. In our hearts 
we love him for it, and so, surely, will the 
island people for many an age to come. 



CHAPTER IX 

STYLE 

Dickens is one of the masters of prose, but in 
a sense that carries qualification. He cannot 
be compared with Thackeray for flow of pure 
idiom, for command of subtle melodies. He 
is often mannered to the last point of endur- 
ance ; he has one fault which offends the prime 
law of prose composition. For all that, he 
made unique use of the English language, and 
his style must be examined as one of the justi- 
fications of his place in literature. 

In the beginning it had excellent qualities ; 
his Sketches are phrased with vigour, with 
variety, and with a soundness of construction 
which he owed to his eighteenth-century studies. 
Dealing for the most part with vulgarity, his 
first book is very free from vulgarisms. In 
one of the earliest letters to Forster, he speaks 
of " your invite ; " but no such abomination 
deforms his printed pages. Facetiousness is 
now and then to blame for an affected sentence, 
and this fault once or twice crops up in later 

i6 



242 CHARLES DICKENS 

books. Someone in Pickwick wears " a grin 
which agitated his countenance from one auric- 
ular organ to the other ; " and in Bleak House , 
when grandfather Smallweed threw his cushion 
at the old woman, we are told that " the effect 
of this act of jaculation was twofold." With- 
out much effort Dickens kept clear of such 
pitfalls ; what might have befallen him but for 
his fine models and his good sense, we may- 
surmise from the style of certain of his more 
or less conscious imitators. Slovenly English 
he never wrote ; the nature of the man made 
it impossible. And in this respect he contrasts 
remarkably with all save the greatest of his 
day. As an illustration of what a generally- 
sound writer could permit himself in the hurry 
of writing a " mere novel/' I remember a pas- 
sage in Ravenshoe (chap, xxviii.), where a dog 
is trying to attract his master's attention ; we 
read, with a little shock of surprise, that " the 
dog wagged his tail and pawed his waistcoat." 
But Dickens respected both himself and his 
public — never a common virtue in the every- 
day English novelist. 

The gravest of his faults, from Oliver Twist 
onwards — and he never wholly overcame it 
— is the habit of writing metrically. He ,is 
not alone in this vice. Charles Kingsley illus- 
trates it very badly in some of his prose ; 



STYLE 243 

especially, I remember, in the Heroes, Should 
any one wish to see how far the trick (uncon- 
sciously, of course) can be carried, let him open 
Richard Jefferies' paper " The Open Air," 
where he will find several pages written, with 
very few breaks, precisely in a metre made 
familiar by Longfellow. As thus: "All the 
devious brooklet's sweetness | where the iris 
stays the sunlight ; | all the wild woods hold 
of beauty : | all the broad hills' thyme and 
freedom : | thrice a hundred years repeated." 
This, of course, betrays an ear untrained in the 
harmonies of prose ; the worst of it is, that 
many readers would discover it with delight, 
and point to it as admirable. A good many 
years since, I came upon a magazine article 
entitled " Dickens as a Poet," the absurd aim 
whereof was to show admiringly how many 
passages from the novels could be written and 
read as blank verse. The fact unfortunately 
cannot be disputed. Dickens wrote thus under 
the influence of strong emotion. He observed 
the tendency, speaks of it as something he 
cannot help, and is not disturbed by it. The 
habit overcame him in his moods of softness ; 
and therefore is particularly noticeable towards 
the end of The Old Curiosity Shop, When his 
emotion is indignant, on the other hand, he is 
not thus tempted ; simply as a bit of prose, the 



244 CHARLES DICKENS 

paragraph giving a general description of the 
children at Dotheboys, is good, well-balanced, 
with no out-of-place rhythm. But turn to a 
passage quoted by Forster (Book III. 8) from 
the American Notes ; quoted as a fine expression 
of his sympathy with the poor. It is nobly 
felt, most admirably worded ; yet the five-foot 
cadence is flagrant here and there. " But 
bring him here, upon this crowded deck. | 
Strip from his fair young wife her silken 
dress | ... pinch her pale cheek with care 
and much privation'* — and so on. One is 
half inclined to think that Dickens did it delib- 
erately, regarding it as an improvement on 
plain prose. 

For a style simple, direct, and forcible, one 
may turn to Barnaby Rudge. Taking it all in 
all, this is perhaps the best written of his 
novels ; best, that is to say, in the sense of 
presenting the smoothest and closest strain of 
narrative. There are no irruptions of metre ; 
the periods are flowing, the language is full of 
subdued energy. Among the first few books 
it is very noticeable for this peculiar excellence. 
One reason, possibly, is its comparative short- 
ness. Nickleby^ on the other hand, has faults 
of style plainly due to the necessity of writing 
more than the author wished to say. One of 
its best knit chapters is that describing Nicholas's 



STYLE 245 

walk from London through Surrey, with 
Smike. We breathe the very air of the downs, 
and smell the sweetness of wayside hedges. 
This power of suggesting a country atmosphere 
is remarkable in Dickens. He hardly ever 
mentions a tree or flower by its name ; he 
never elaborates — perhaps never even sketches 
— a landscape ; yet we see and feel the open- 
air surroundings. The secret is his own delight 
in the road and the meadow, and his infinite 
power of suggestion in seemingly unconsidered 
words. 

In narrative, he is always excellent when de- 
scribing rapid journeys. The best coach-drive 
ever put into words is that of the Muggle- 
ton coach, in Pickwick, It surpasses the much 
longer description in Chuzzlewitj which comes 
near to being monotonous after many para- 
graphs beginning with the same words ; it 
is incredibly exhilarating, and would put a 
healthy glow, as of a fine frosty morning, 
into the veins of a man languishing in the 
tropics. We are asked to believe that the 
story (in Bleak House) of the posting journey 
conducted by Inspector Bucket, came from 
the pen of Miss Esther Summerson ; the 
brain, at all events, was Dickens's, and work- 
ing with its most characteristic vigour. He 
knew every stage covered by the travellers ; he 



246 CHARLES DICKENS 

saw the gleam of the lamps, the faces they 
illumined but for a moment ; the very horses 
brought out fresh were his old acquaintances. 
Such writing is no mere question of selecting 
and collocating words ; there must first be 
vision, and that of extraordinary clearness. 
Dickens tells us that in times of worry or of 
grave trouble, he could still write ; he had but 
to sit down at his desk, and straightway he 
saw. Where — as would happen — he saw 
untruly, a mere fantasm thrown forward by 
the mind, his hand at once had lost its cun- 
ning. When vision was but a subtly en- 
hanced memory, he never lacked the skill to 
make it seen by others. 

Think of the easy graphic power that 
Dickens possessed, and compare it for a 
moment with the results of such laborious 
effort to the same ends as was put forth by 
the French novelist Flaubert. On the one 
hand, here is a man who works hard indeed, 
and methodically, but whose work is ever a 
joy to him and not seldom a rapture. On 
the other, we have growls and groans ; toil 
advancing at snail's pace, whilst sweat drips 
from the toiler's brow ; little or no satisfaction 
to him in the end from all his suffering. And 
not one page of Flaubert gives proof of sight 
and grasp equal to that evinced in a thousand 



STYLE 247 

of Dickens. This thing cometh not by prayer 
and fasting, nor by any amount of thinking 
about art. You have it or you have it not. 
As a boy or youth Dickens was occupied in 
seeing; as a young man he took his pen and 
began to write of what he had seen. And the 
world saw with him — much better than with 
its own poor, purblind eyes. 

In the story of David Copperfield's journey 
on the Dover road, we have as good a piece 
of narrative prose as can be found in English. 
Equally good, in another way, are those pas- 
sages of rapid retrospect, in which David tells 
us of his later boyhood ; a concentration of 
memory perfumed with the sweetest humour. 
It is not an easy thing to relate with perfect 
proportion of detail, with interest that never 
for a moment drops, the course of a year or 
two of wholly uneventful marriage ; but read 
the chapter entitled " Our Domestic Life " 
and try to award adequate praise to the great 
artist who composed it. One can readily suggest 
how the chapter might have been spoiled ; ever 
so little undue satire, ever so little excess of 
sentiment ; but who can point to a line in 
which it might be bettered? It is perfect 
writing; one can say no more and no less. 

Another kind of descriptive writing appears 
in the nineteenth chapter of Chuzzlewit : the 



248 CHARLES DICKENS 

funeral of old Anthony, conducted by Mr. 
Mould. What of the scope declared in a 
contrast of this chapter with the one in Cop- 
perfield just mentioned? I should not like 
to say that one excels the other ; I should find 
it impossible to decide between their merits. 
Where is the " extravagance " which, we are 
told, has pronounced Dickens's doom? Mr. 
Mould and his retainers, the whole funeral 
from household to grave, seems to me such 
realism as no other novelist ever came near 
unto ; for it is mere straightforward describ- 
ing and narrating, without a hint of effort ; 
and there stands the thing for ever. 

A fine piece of the grimly picturesque is 
Quilp's death. Better, because more human, 
is the narrative in Barnaby Rudge of the day 
and night before the gaol-delivery, when the 
rioters are to be hung. It has the effect of 
rapidity, but contains an immense amount of 
detail, actual and imaginative. Dennis, Hugh, 
and Barnaby, together in their cell, are seen 
by us as the swift hours pass, and at the same 
time we know what is going on without. Of 
all the broad and the delicate touches in which 
these pages abound, not one could be omitted 
as superfluous ; and the impression aimed at is 
obtained with absolute success. 

Narrative, of course, includes description ; 



STYLE 249 

but in description by itself and in elaborate 
picturing, as distinguished from the hints which 
so often serve his purpose, Dickens is very- 
strong. Before speaking of the familiar in- 
stances, let me mention that chapter at the 
beginning of Little Dorrit^ which opens with 
a picture of London as seen on a gloomy 
Sunday — if the phrase be not tautological. 
It is very curious reading. For once we have 
Dickens quite divested of his humour, and 
beholding the great city in something like a 
splenetic mood. As conveying an impression, 
the passage could not be better ; it makes us 
feel precisely what one has felt times innumer- 
able amid the black lifeless houses, under a 
sky that crushes the spirit. But seldom in- 
deed can Dickens have seen and felt thus. 
Compare with it his picture of the fog — Mr. 
Guppy's " London particular " — at the open- 
ing of Bleak House, This darkness visible 
makes one rather cheerful than otherwise, for 
we are spectators in the company of a man 
who allows nothing to balk his enjoyment 
of life, and who can jest unaffectedly even 
in such circumstances. Those few pages of 
Little Borrity admirable as art, suggest the 
kind of novels Dickens might have written 
without his humour. But in that case he 
would not have written them at all. 



250 



CHARLES DICKENS 



His normal manner is seen in the description 
of the Fleet, in Pickwick, It would appear 
difficult to make a vivid picture of such a place, 
a picture which convinces, and yet to omit 
things vile or intolerable to the feelings ; yet 
here it is done. The same art manifests itself 
as in his masterpieces of characterization ; 
something is obscured, but nothing falsified. 
At times, he could make a sketch in what is 
known as the impressionist manner ; rapid, 
strong, and in the broadest lines suggesting a 
vast amount of detail ; as in the description 
of the Gordon rioters seen, passing in their 
drunken fury along the street, from an up- 
per window (Barnaby^ chap. 1.). Dickens was 
rather proud of this passage ; he calls attention 
to it in a letter written at the time. Innumer- 
able the aspects of London presented in his 
books ; what a wonderful little volume might 
be made by collecting such passages ! Of the 
West-end we have ghmpses only ; one remem- 
bers, however, that very genteel but stuffy 
corner inhabited by the house of Barnacle, and 
the similar locality where dwelt Miss Tox. 
Stately and wealthy London he does not show 
us ; his artistic preference is for the quaint, 
out-of-the-way quarters, or for the grim and the 
lurid, out of which he made a picturesque of 
his own. Writing once from Naples (where 



STYLE 



251 



he was merely disappointed and disgusted, we 
can see why), he says, " I am afraid the con- 
ventional idea of the picturesque is associated 
with such misery and degradation that a new 
picturesque will have to be established as the 
world goes onward.'' Conventional his own 
ideas and presentiments certainly were not, but, 
for the most part, they are closely connected 
with misery and degradation. Jacob's Island 
and Tom-all-alone's have the effect of fine, wild 
etchings lighted only just sufficiently to show 
broad features and suggest details one does not 
desire to pry into. Krook's house and its sur- 
roundings make an essential part of the world 
shadowed by Chancery ; unutterably foul and 
stifling, yet so shown as to hold the imagination 
in no painful way. Dickens views such scenes 
in a romantic light. It is the property of his 
genius to perceive romance in the commonplace 
and the squalid, no less than in clean and com- 
fortable homeliness. 

What he can make out of a wretched little 
room a few feet square, in a close-packed, sordid 
neighbourhood, is shown in Chapter xlvi. of 
Chuzzlewit. Jonas, become a murderer, is 
lurking in his own house, and chooses a corner 
of it where he is not likely to be observed. 
" The room In which he had shut himself up was 
on the ground floor, at the back of the house. 



252 CHARLES DICKENS 

It was lighted by a dirty sky-light, and had a 
door in the wall, opening into a narrow, covered 
passage or blind alley. ... It was a blotched, 
stained, mouldering room, like a vault ; and 
there were water-pipes running through it, 
which, at unexpected times in the night, when 
other things were quiet, clicked and gurgled 
suddenly, as if they were choking." Nothing 
could be more insignificant, and at the same 
time more grim. An out-of-doors companion 
to it may be found in Great Expectations. " I 
came into Smithfield ; the shameful place, being 
all filth and fat and blood and foam, seemed to 
stick to me. So I rubbed it off with all possi- 
ble speed by turning into a street where I saw 
the great black dome of St. PauFs bulging at 
me from behind a grim stone building which a 
bystander said was Newgate Prison. Follow- 
ing the wall of the jail, I found the roadway 
covered with straw to deaden the sound of pass- 
sing vehicles ; and from the quantity of people 
standing about, smelling strongly of spirits 
and beer, I inferred that the trials were 
on " (chap. xx.). This is " locality '* as good 
as the bit of human portraiture which follows 
(Mr. Jaggers walking through the throng of 
his cHents) ; and higher praise could not be 
bestowed. 

I suppose there is no English writer, per- 



STYLE 



253 



haps no writer in any literature, who so often 
gives proof of wonderfully minute observa- 
tion. It is an important source of his 
strength ; it helps him to put people and 
things before us more clearly than, as a rule, 
we should ourselves see them. Two examples 
only can I find room for ; but they will suffice. 
Peggotty's purse, given to little David on his 
departure from Yarmouth, was found to con- 
tain "three bright shillings, which Peggotty 
had evidently polished up with whiting for 
my greater delight." And again, little Pip, 
after being washed by his sister, is led to 
make the remark : " I suppose myself to be 
better acquainted than any living authority 
with the ridgy effect of a wedding-ring, 
passing unsympathetically over the human 
countenance." You will come across no such 
instances as these in any other novelist, of 
observation, memory and imaginative force, 
all evinced in a touch of detail so indescrib- 
ably trivial ; its very triviality being the proof 
of power in one who could so choose for his 
purposes among the neglected incidents of 
life. 

When Dickens writes in his pleasantest 
mood of things either pleasant in themselves, 
or especially suggestive of humorous reflec- 
tion, his style is faultless; perfectly suited. 



254 CHARLES DICKENS 

that is to say, to the author's aim and to 
the matter in hand. His Christmas number 
called The Holly Tree begins with a chapter 
on Inns ; we rise from it feeling that on that 
subject the last word has been said, and said 
in the best possible way. His book of col- 
lected papers, The Uncommercial Traveller^ con- 
sists almost wholly of such writing. Whether 
its theme is City of London Churches, or Shy 
Neighbourhoods, Tramps, or Night-walks, or 
London Chambers, he is invariably happy in 
phrase, and in flow of language which, always 
easy, never falls below the level of literature. 
In such work, he must be put beside the 
eighteenth-century essayists, whom he always 
had in mind. His English is not less idio- 
matic than theirs, and his views of life find 
no less complete expression through the 
medium of a style so lightly and deftly 
handled. 



CHAPTER X 



THE RADICAL 



Dickens's superabounding energy, and the 
unrest which frequently came upon him in 
consequence of private worries, now and then 
diverted his thoughts from the all-sufficient 
labours of literature, and made him anxious 
to try his strength in public life. At one 
time he made deliberate inquiry as to the 
possibility of his becoming a stipendiary magi- 
strate ; but the replies he received were not 
encouraging. At another, he fixed his mind 
on political journalism ; and this had practical 
result in the establishment of the Daily News, 
which paper, as we have seen, he edited for 
only a few days. A desire to preside in 
courts of justice was natural enough in the 
author of Oliver Twist; and like other men 
of letters much concerned with social ques- 
tions, he imagined that the columns of a great 
newspaper would afford him the best possible 
field for making known his views and influ- 
encing the world. One step which has 



'ise CHARLES DICKENS 

tempted writers from their appointed task 
he seems never to have seriously contem- 
plated ; he received invitations to stand as a 
Parliamentary candidate, but gave no ear to 
them. 

The term which described him as politician 
and social reformer is no longer in common 
use ; he was a Radical. This meant, of course, 
one who was discontented with the slow course 
of legislation, moving decorously " from pre- 
cedent to precedent," and with the aristocratic 
ideas underlying English life ; one who desired 
radical changes, in the direction of giving 
liberty and voice to the majority of the people. 
In a day of advancing Socialism, the demands 
put forward by such men seem timidly tenta- 
tive. To our mind, Dickens is in most things 
a Conservative, and never in his intention truly 
democratic — using the word in its original 
sense. We have to remember the reforms 
actually achieved in his time to recognize how 
progressive was the Radical spirit. Dickens's 
novels had no small part in the good work, 
and their influence certainly went further than 
he knew. 

Even in the Sketches he writes satirically of 
the House of Commons, and at a later time 
his attitude towards Parliament was no less 
contemptuous than Carlyle*s. A letter, bear- 



/, 



THE RADICAL 257 

ing the date 1855, declares his grave belief that 
Representative Government was a failure in 
England, owing to the national vice which was 
then known as " flunkeyism." At that time 
he was writing Little Dorrit, and had many- 
reasons for discontent with things in general. 
But he never desired or anticipated a political 
revolution of the thorough kind. His first 
visit to America gave him impressions on the 
subject of Republicanism which were never 
removed. He writes thence to Forster, 1842, 
that he trembled for any Radical who should 
cross the Atlantic, " unless he is a Radical on 
principle, by reason and reflection, and from 
the sense of right. I do fear that the heaviest 
blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this 
country, in the failure of its example to the 
earth.'* If that example had proved to be in 
any respect hopeful, he would undoubtedly 
have rejoiced. Later he probably felt some 
little satisfaction in the thought that the great 
Republic had not done so greatly better, all 
things considered, than monarchic England. 

He never attained to a theory of reform ; it 
was not in his mind, his character, to elaborate 
such reflections. What he thought about the 
by-gone story of his country we can read in 
the series of chapters which he wrote for House- 
hold JVordSy and afterwards published as the 

17 



258 CHARLES DICKENS 

Child* s History of England, As literature it is 
not happy; only too often one is reminded (at 
a great distance certainly) of that disgusting 
series of books called Comic Histories, which 
someone or other disgraced himself by writing. 
Dickens had no serious historical knowledge, 
and no true understanding of what is meant 
by history ; his volume shows a series of more 
or less grotesque sovereigns, who play pranks 
before high heaven at the expense of the mul- 
titudes they are supposed to rule by divine 
right. Most unfortunate would be the child 
into whose hand this " history " was put. The 
one clear suggestion we carry away after trying 
to read it, is that Dickens congratulated him- 
self on living in the nineteenth century, a sub- 
ject of Queen Victoria. It was part of his 
Radicalism to speak of " the bad old times," 
and true history of course not seldom justifies 
him. After a visit to Chillon, he writes an 
admirable letter of description and ends ex- 
claiming — "Good God, the greatest mystery 
In all the earth, to me, is how or why the 
world was tolerated by its Creator through the 
good old times, and was n*t dashed to frag- 
ments." It was natural that he had no pro- 
found love of Walter Scott, who must often 
have excited his impatience. The past, to his 
mind, was much better forgotten. That the 



THE RADICAL 259 

world progressed, he never for a moment held 
in doubt ; but the rate of progress was not at 
all in keeping with his energetic habits. 

In a speech on some public occasion he 
made a political remark, which, from the ambi- 
guity of its wording, caused newspaper discus- 
sion ; he said that he had little or no faith in 
the people governing, but faith limitless in the 
people governed. Obviously, the shrewdest 
" trimmer " could not have devised a form of 
words allowing more latitude of interpretation ; 
but what Dickens meant was plain enough to 
anyone who did not desire to misunderstand 
him. He explained afterwards that the first 
"people*' should be spelt with a small initial 
letter, the second with a capital. But even so, 
an ambiguity remains, for " the people gov- 
erned " may mean either a fact or a hypothesis. 
Dickens intended the former ; he could have 
implied the latter without any contradiction of 
his views as seen throughout the novels. He 
was never a democrat ; in his heart he always 
held that to he governed was the people's good ; 
only let the governors be rightly chosen. Her- 
bert Spencer has a precious sentence with which 
Dickens would profoundly have agreed in all 
its issues. " There is no political alchemy by 
which you can get golden conduct out of 
leaden instincts." Dickens knew — no man 



26o CHARLES DICKENS 

better — how unfit are the vast majority of 
mankind to form sound views as to what is 
best for them whether in public or private life ; 
he knew that ignorance inevitably goes hand in 
hand with forms of baseness, and that though 
the voice of the people must be heard, it can- 
not always be allowed to rule. This is very 
moderate doctrine indeed, but it then qualified 
a man as a good Radical. Not much more 
advanced was the position of the little band 
of teachers who called themselves " Christian 
Socialists," men with whom Dickens very 
largely sympathized. 

He had the sincerest admiration for Carlyle, 
the sound of whose great guns could not but 
delight him — at all events when they were 
directed against the aristocracy and its game- 
preserving habits. Himself an aristocrat to 
the core in the nobler and truer sense of the 
word, and with very little patience for the sim- 
pletons and weaklings whom Dickens took to 
his heart with so warm a charity, Carlyle was 
yet far more passionate than the novelist on 
behalf of the poor and hard-driven sons of 
men. A humorist, he too, and among the 
greatest. Carlyle could jest but grimly where 
his eyes fell upon those "hard-entreated 
brothers ; " he felt within himself the wrath of 
the prophet moved to lift up his voice against 



THE RADICAL 261 

the world's Injustice. Conscious himself of the 
ills of poverty, not only in childhood but at 
the time of life when want breeds gall and bit- 
terness in strong hearts, he could remind the 
poor of their eternal duties with stoic sternness, 
but in the next moment turned away to hide a 
tear. Vastly wider was his vision than that of 
Dickens, and so much the deeper his compas- 
sion. Another great name rightly associated 
with Radicalism is that of Tennyson. He who 
wrote Locksley Hall and Maud had no stinted 
sympathy with the revolt against pride of place. 
A hackneyed strophe in Vere de Vere expressed 
the inmost thought of Dickens's heart. Ten- 
nyson moved on to other things ; he had a 
larger mission ; but no word that stands upon 
his perfect page did wrong to the ideal of 
humanity he had followed in his youth. Un- 
able though he was to enter into the poet's 
highest mood, Dickens held substantially by 
the same moral and intellectual guidance. Their 
messages do not contradict, but supplement, 
each other. 

" I exhort my dear children " — thus runs a 
passage at the close of Dickens's will — " hum- 
bly to try to guide themselves by the teaching 
of the New Testament In Its broad spirit, and 
to put no faith In any man's narrow construc- 
tion of its letter here and there." It is the 



262 CHARLES DICKENS 

essence of his religion ; and his religion (oddly 
as it may sound) had a great deal to do with 
the tone and teaching of his literary work. 
We are told that, for a few years, he attended 
a Unitarian place of worship ; but this involved 
no dogmatic heresy ; at all events, no mental 
travail on religious subjects. It meant only 
that the clergy of the English church had 
irritated and disgusted him. The causes of 
such feeling are not far to seek, but it will be 
enough here to mention a fact which he em- 
phasizes in one of his letters, that not until the 
year of grace 1848 did any Bishop of London 
make his voice heard as to the necessity of 
providing the poor with better dwellings. One 
bears in mind what sort of habitations sheltered 
the poor of London ; one remembers also cer- 
tain events of that very year '48 ; and the two 
reflections help us to understand Dickens's 
attitude. Preoccupied always with the thought 
of Christ's simple teaching, he took the trouble 
to extract, for his children's use, what seemed 
to him the essential portions of the New 
Testament ; and it would greatly have pleased 
him could such a little volume have been used 
for the instruction of the children of the poor. 
Instead, he saw them brought up on " the 
church catechism and other mere formularies 
and subtleties," and he saw their instructors 



THE RADICAL 263 

fighting for this mere husk of religion as 
though it were the Master's vital word — that 
word, meanwhile, being by most of them 
assiduously neglected. None the less he re- 
turned to the English church, and to the end 
remained a member of it. How he looked 
upon the more aggressive forms of Dissent we 
know. It would be a libel to say that Dickens 
clung to the Establishment because it was 
" respectable," but undoubtedly he did so in 
part because the Church belonged to that 
ancient and solid order of things in England 
which he never wished to see overturned. 
Many a man of brains still behaves in the 
same way, for the same reason. Of his reli- 
gious sincerity, in the broader sense, there can 
be no possibility of doubt. He was the last 
man to drag sacred names and associations into 
his books on trivial pretexts ; but whenever he 
alludes to Christian precept or makes mention 
of the Teacher himself, it Is with a simple 
reverence very beautiful and touching ; words 
which came from his own heart, and go straight 
to that of his reader. 

We do not nowadays look for a fervent 
Christianity in leaders of the people. In that, 
as in several other matters, Dickens was by 
choice retrospective. Still writing at a time 
when " infidelity " — the word then used — 



264 CHARLES DICKENS 

was becoming rife among the populace of great 
towns, he never makes any reference to it, and 
probably did not take it into account ; it had 
no place in his English ideal. I doubt, indeed, 
whether he was practically acquainted with the 
" free-thinking " workman. A more notice- 
able omission from his books (if we except the 
one novel which I cannot but think a failure) 
is that of the workman at war with capital. 
This great struggle, going on before him all 
his life, found no place in the scheme of his 
fiction. He shows us poor men who suffer 
under tyranny, and who exclaim against the 
hardship of things ; but never such a represen- 
tative wage-earner as was then to be seen 
battling for bread and right. One reason is 
plain : Dickens did not know the north of 
England. With adequate knowledge of a 
manufacturing town, he would never have 
written so unconvincingly as in his book Hard 
Times — the opportunity for dealing with this 
subject. Stephen Blackpool represents nothing 
at all ; he is a mere model of meekness, and 
his great misfortune is such as might befall any 
man anywhere, the curse of a drunken wife. 
The book is a crude attack on materialism, a 
theme which might, of course, have entered 
very well into a study of the combatant work- 
ing-class. But, as I have already pointed out, 



THE RADICAL 26s 

the working-class is not Dickens's field, even 
in London. For the purposes of fiction, it is a 
class still waiting its portrayer ; much has been 
written about it in novels, but we have no 
work of the first order dealing primarily with 
that form of life. Mrs. Gaskell essayed the 
theme very faithfully, and with some success ; 
but it was not her best work. I can recall no 
working-class figures in English novels so truly 
representative as those in Charlotte Bronte's 
second book. Given a little wider experience, 
the author of Shirley might have exhibited this 
class in a masterpiece such as we vainly look for. 
I do not forget Rouncewell in Bleak House, 
He is a Radical, vigorous in action and in 
speech ; but then, he happens to be an employer, 
and not a " hand." His purpose in visiting 
Chesney Wold is to withdraw from domestic 
service, as from . an unsuitable position, the 
young girl with whom his son has fallen in 
love. Mr. Rouncewell belongs distinctly to 
the middle class — the " great " middle class. 
He is a Radical, in the way of becoming a 
considerable capitalist. Note that Dickens saw 
no incongruity in these things. He makes it 
plain to us that the man has risen by honest 
ability and work ; this being so, he has a right 
to stand firmly, but respectfully, face to face 
with Sir Leicester Dedlock, or with men of 



266 CHARLES DICKENS 

even higher title. It is the middle-class idea ; 
that which developed together with England's 
wealth — at the cost of things which we agree 
to forget. Dickens greatly admires and sym- 
pathizes with Mr. Rouncewell. Yet, at this 
distance of time, we feel it rather difficult to 
understand why the successful iron-founder 
should be a more sympathetic figure than the 
honest-hearted baronet. The one represents a 
coming triumph ; the other, a sinking cause ; 
but, in the meantime, it remains very doubtful 
whether the triumphing order will achieve more 
for the interests of humanity than that which 
has received its death-blow. Mr. Rounce- 
welFs characteristics are very significant ; he is 
the ideal Englishman in the eye of Dickens, 
and of most of his contemporaries. The son 
of a domestic servant — who is herself a model 
woman, having risen to the position of con- 
fidential housekeeper in a great family — he 
could never for a moment feel ashamed of his 
origin; nay, on due occasion he will be proud 
of it ; but he is making money, and looks for- 
ward to establishing a "family'* of his own. 
Elaborately, yet modestly, he expounds the 
situation to the wondering Sir Leicester. With 
a certain semi-conscious self-approval, he makes 
known to the baronet that it is no uncommon 
thing for the son of a wealthy manufacturer to 



THE RADICAL 267 

fall In love with a working girl, in which event 
the girl is removed from her lowly position to be 
suitably educated and prepared for her duties 
as a middle-class wife. (Observe our prog- 
ress ; Mr. Rouncewell would hardly be so 
complacent in speaking of such love-affairs 
nowadays ; but that by the by.) There is no 
hint that the mothers of prosperous men should 
be removed from a place of servitude. Old 
and new here meet amicably. Mrs. Rounce- 
well would never consent to quit Chesney 
Wold, where she regards her duties as a high 
privilege ; she "knows her place," and her son, 
anything but an intentional revolutionist, is 
quite content that this should be so. The 
whole scene is a most valuable bit of history. 
Sir Leicester and his lady, with old Mrs. 
Rouncewell, represent the past; Rouncewell, 
his son, and the pretty girl in Lady Dedlock*s 
service, stand for the future. All is civilly 
transacted; the baronet could not behave other- 
v/ise than as noblesse oblige ; the iron-master is 
very much of a gentleman. Our author is not 
entirely aware of his success in satire ; for Sir 
Leicester has more reason to marvel at the 
social change going on about him than Dickens 
himself perceived. 

Honesty, hard work, worldly success — 
these are the ideal of the new order ; and 



268 CHARLES DICKENS 

Dickens heartily approves them. Was he not 
himself a brilliant example of the self-made 
man ? Much more than that, to be sure ; 
and therefore he supplements the commonly 
admired scheme of things with a humanity of 
thought which places him above temporary 
conditions. Read his address given to audi- 
ences of the new democracy ; especially that 
delivered at the Birmingham and Midland 
Institute, in which he used the ambiguous 
phrases, quoted above, about the people gov- 
erning and governed. Here, as often in pub- 
lic speeches, he expressly declares that study 
must not be undertaken solely for the sake 
of " getting on," but for the moral and intel- 
lectual good resulting to him who studies, and 
for the power it bestows of doing good to 
others. He said it with all sincerity ; but his 
audience, we may be sure, kept before them, 
whilst they listened, the mental image of Mr. 
Rouncewell. When Dickens spoke of Prog- 
ress, it was thus that the people interpreted 
him. And of Progress he spoke much and 
often, convinced as he was that his country 
was moving steadily towards a better day. 
Human nature being what it is, a commercial 
epoch might do much worse than set up Mr. 
Rouncewell as its patron saint. But Sir Leices- 
ter, too, had his intimations of futurity; he 



THE RADICAL 269 

may, in his darkest moments, have foreseen 
Chesney Wold fallen into the possession of 
some lord of millions, who neither knew nor 
cared anything about the fair traditions of the 
past, who revelled in vulgar display, and who, 
by the force of his glaring example, promoted 
bitterness and warfare between the classes and 
the nations of mankind. Dickens lived to see 
the beginnings of plutocracy. He would not 
have glorified that form of progress ; but all 
unconsciously he had his part in bringing it 
about. 

One vice which had formerly been proper 
to aristocratic circles, that of furious gambling, 
he saw spreading through society at large, and 
spoke of it as became him. He chanced to 
be at Doncaster during the races, and after 
describing in a letter the scenes of that lively 
time, he adds, " 1 vow to God that I can see 
nothing in it but cruelty, covetousness, cal- 
culation, insensibility, and low wickedness." 
These are honest words. But no man's cen- 
sure can avail against a national curse which 
IS inseparably connected with the triumph of 
commercialism. 

On its better side, then, Dickens's Radical- 
ism consisted in profound sympathy with the 
poor, and boundless contempt of all social 
superiority that is merely obstructive. Speak- 



270 CHARLES DICKENS 

ing of the Chimes^ he said that it was his wish 
and hope in this book " to strike a blow for 
the poor." Many such blows he struck, and 
that right manfully. Our social experience 
forbids us to think that his views were always 
wise. He hated the new Poor Law, merely 
because it put an end to a ruinous system of 
outdoor relief and compelled the indigent to 
live in so-called workhouses. One can only 
wonder that his feeling so much overcame his 
robust common-sense. Quite late in his career 
we come across the old animosity in his de- 
scription of Betty Higden {Our Mutual Friend), 
one of the least valuable of his pictures of poor 
life. Old Betty lives in terror of the work- 
house, and wishes to die in a ditch rather than 
be taken care of by the Union. This is in- 
telligible enough ; one knows that workhouses 
are often brutally conducted, and one sympa- 
thizes very thoroughly with a loathing of that 
" charity " which is not at all synonymous with 
charity in its true sense. But Betty, as a figure 
in fiction, does not interest us ; she is so evi- 
dently a mere mouthpiece for criticism of a 
system ; we do not see her, and do not believe 
in her talk. The practical man only scoffs. 
And Dickens could so easily have drawn a 
character at which no scoffing would have been 
possible. 



THE RADICAL 271 

It IS an obvious fault of his work when he 
exhibits victims of social wrong, that it takes 
no due account of the effect of conditions upon 
character. Think of little Oliver Twist, who 
has been brought up under Bumble and Com- 
pany, amid the outcasts of the v/orld, yet is as 
remarkable for purity of mind as for accuracy 
of grammar. Oliver, when taken to Fagin's 
house, is wholly at a loss to conjecture the 
meaning of words and acts which even a well- 
bred boy of his age could not fail to under- 
stand ; the workhouse lad had evidently never 
heard of pickpockets. Granted that Oliver 
was of gentle blood, heredity does not go so 
far as this. Little Dorrit, again; she is the 
child of the Marshalsea ; and think of what 
that meant, even apart from the fact of her 
more literal parentage. Yet we find no blem- 
ish in her; she has grown up " under the lock " 
without contracting one bad habit of thought 
or speech ; indeed, one does not know in what 
way Amy Dorrit could be morally improved. 
This is optimism of the crudest kind, but 
to Dickens and to his readers it suggested 
no troublesome reflections. To show either 
Oliver or Amy as a creature of pure instincts, 
struggling and stumbling towards the light 
and often sinking in despair, would have sat- 
isfied neither; the good character must be 



272 



CHARLES DICKENS 



good in spite of everything, or the Ruler of 
the universe seems dishonoured. 

To us, in a day of sociology, such ideals are 
uninteresting, and it relieves us when we come 
across such a capital study of the everyday fact 
as is seen (Dombey) in Mrs. Toodle*s graceless 
son, Rob the Grinder. Robert was a charity- 
boy, and probably a fair specimen of the breed. 
From the doubtless well-meaning care of the 
Charitable Grinders he has come forth a very 
troublesome young rascal ; slippery, untruth- 
ful, dishonest, and the ready instrument of any 
mature scoundrel who chooses to throw him 
a copper. This, notwithstanding the sterling 
qualities of his father and mother. Rob is 
quite capable of penitence ; it makes him 
uncomfortable when he knows that his good 
mother is crying about him ; but after every 
resolution of amendment comes a speedy re- 
lapse, and when we at length lose sight of him, 
it is with no certainty that he will not live to 
be transported. Excellent characterization, 
and far more profitable from the point of view 
of the good Radical than many crossing- 
sweeper Joes or declaiming Betty Higdens. 
It goes to the root of the matter. Rob has 
been infamously neglected by the pretentious 
folk who made such a merit of supplying him 
with bread-and-butter and a hideous garb. 



THE RADICAL 273 

This was plainly not the way to make a good 
citizen out of a low-born child — or any other 
child. It pointed to the need for education 
other than that supplied by Grinders, however 
charitable ; and from this point of view, Rob 
is one of the most important of Dickens's 
social studies. 

Whilst speaking of the influence of social 
conditions, one ought to glance again at the 
Smallweed family, in Bleak House, These 
creatures, whether it was meant or not, plainly 
stand for the blighted, stunted, and prema- 
turely old offspring of foggiest London. Im- 
possible, we are told, to conceive of them as 
having ever been young. Nothing could be 
truer. These are typical products of a mon- 
strous barbarism masked as civilization ; sav- 
ages amid the smoke and filth and clamour of 
a huge town, just ^as much as the dirty grizzled 
Indian crouched in a corner of his wigwam. 
Dickens chose to dwell on things more 
pleasant and, as It seemed to him, better for 
the soul ; but he knew very well that for one 
Tim Linkinwater there existed five thousand 
Smallweeds. Not only in the neighbourhood 
of Chancery do such weeds crop up ; it is the 
pestilent air of crowded brick and mortar that 
nourishes them. Statisticians tell us that Lon- 
don families simply die out in the third gener- 
is 



274 CHARLES DICKENS 

ation ; on the whole one is glad to hear It. 
Unfortunately, their decaying leaves a miasma; 
and all children so luckless as to breathe it 
with their daily air shrivel in mind, if not in 
body, before they have a chance of enjoying 
youth. 

Dickens's remedy for the evils left behind by 
the bad old times was, for the most part, pri- 
vate benevolence. He distrusted legislation; 
he had little faith in the work of associations ; 
though such work as that of the Ragged 
Schools strongly interested him. His saviour 
of society was a man of heavy purse and large 
heart, who did the utmost possible good in his 
own particular sphere. This, too, was char- 
acteristic of the age of free-contract, which 
claimed every man's right to sell himself as 
best he could, or by as many other men as his 
means allowed. At one with Carlyle in scorn- 
ing the theory that " cash was the sole nexus " 
between human beings, Dickens would have 
viewed uneasily any project for doing away 
with this nexus altogether ; which would mean 
the abolition of a form of beneficence in which 
he delighted. With what gusto does he write 
of any red-cheeked old gentleman who goes 
about scattering half-sovereigns, and finding 
poor people employment, and brightening 
squalid sick-chambers with the finest produce 



THE RADICAL 275 

of Covent Garden. In the Christmas Books, 
he went to pantomimic lengths in this kind of 
thing ; but no one was asked to take Scrooge 
very seriously, either as a grasping curmudgeon, 
or when he bawls out of the window his jovial 
orders for Christmas fare. Figures, however, 
such as Mr. Garland and the Cheerybles and 
John Jarndyce and many another were pre- 
sented in all good faith. We may even see 
Dickens himself playing the part, and very 
creditably, in that delightful Christmas paper 
of his, the Seven Poor Travellers; where it 
makes one's mouth water to read of the fare he 
ordered at the inn for those lucky vagabonds. 
In the Cheeryble brothers he indulges his 
humane imagination to the full. That there 
indeed existed a couple of kind-hearted mer- 
chants, who were as anxious to give money as 
others are to make it, we will believe on the 
author's assurance ; but that anyone ever saw 
the Cheerybles in the flesh we decline to credit. 
They are chubby fairies in tights and gaiters ; 
a light not of this world flushes about their 
jolly forms. Dickens becomes wild with 
joyous sympathy in telling of their eccentric 
warm-heartedness. " Damn you, Tim Linkin- 
water ! " they exclaim — unable in the ordinary 
language of afi^ection to set free their feelings. 
To double a clerk's salary is a mere bit of fore- 



276 CHARLES DICKENS 

noon fun ; after dinner, we picture them sup- 
plying fraudulent debtors with capital for a new 
undertaking, or purchasing an estate in Hamp- 
shire to be made over forthwith to the widow 
of some warehouse porter with sixteen children. 
The harm they must have done, those two 
jolly old boys ! But Dickens would not hear 
of such a suggestion. He considered, above 
all, the example of self-forgetfulness, of mercy. 
And as " people in a book," it is likely enough 
that Tim Linkinwater^s employers are to this 
day bearing far and wide a true gospel of 
humanity. 

The very heartiness of this benevolence pre- 
cludes every suspicion of offensive patronage. 
We know that these men do good because it 
gives them more pleasure than anything else ; 
and their geniality is a result thereof Even 
so in Dickens himself; he is incapable of 
speaking and thinking of the poor as from a 
higher place ; no man ever pleaded their cause 
with simpler sincerity. He is always, and 
naturally, on their side, as against the canter, 
and the bully, and the snob ; even as against a 
class of rich folk with whom he had otherwise 
no quarrel. It overjoys him to find good in 
anyone of lowly station, to show virtues in the 
uneducated. Those very Cheeryble brothers, 
do they not eat with their knives ? We should 



THE RADICAL 277 

not have known it, but he goes out of his 
way to tell us ; he insists upon the fact with 
pride, and to throw scorn upon the fastidious, 
who would disapprove of this habit. Always 
it is the heart rather than the head. A man 
who has been to school and college may, of 
course, have virtues ; but how much fairer do 
they shine — thinks Dickens — in him who 
drops his A's and does not know the world is 
round! In this respect — as in various others 
— there is a difference between Dickens and 
that other Radical novelist, Charles Kingsley. 
The author of Alton Locke chooses for his hero 
a working-man whose intellect is so much 
above the average that he is nothing less 
than a great poet. One cannot imagine such 
a figure in Dickens. Copperfield — by the 
autobiographic necessity of the case — does 
not come of the proletariate, and I remember 
no instance of a person born in that class to 
whom Dickens gives anything more than me- 
chanical aptitudes. It was reserved for Thack- 
eray to make a great artist of a butler's son, 
and for Kingsley to show us a tailor writing 
" The Sands of Dee." I mention this simply as 
a fact, without implying any adverse criticism ; 
it was the part of Dickens to show the beauty 
of moral virtues, and to declare that these 
could be found in all kinds of men, irrespec- 



278 CHARLES DICKENS 

tive of birth and education. When sending 
forth her nephew into the world Betsy Trot- 
wood gave him this brief counsel, " Never be 
mean ; never be false ; never be cruel." Better 
advice she could not have bestowed ; and it 
was the ideal of conduct held up by Dickens 
to all his readers, from beginning to end. If 
he could discover shining examples of such 
virtue among the poor and the ignorant, their 
mental dulness seemed to him of but small 
account. 

It does his heart good to play the advocate 
and the friend to those with whom nature and 
man have dealt most cruelly. Upon a Smike 
or a Maggie (in Little Dorr it) he lavishes his 
tenderness simply because they are hapless 
creatures from whom even ordinary kind 
people would turn with involuntary dislike. 
Maggie is a starved and diseased idiot, a very 
child of the London gutter, mopping and 
mowing to signify her pleasures or her pains. 
Dickens gives her for protector the brave and 
large-hearted child of the Marshalsea, whose 
own sufferings have taught her to compassion- 
ate those who suffer still more. Maggie is 
to be rescued from filth and cold and hunger ; 
is to be made as happy as her nature will 
allow. It is nobly done, and, undoubtedly, 
an example of more value to the world than 
any glorification of triumphant intellect. 



THE RADICAL 279 

At times, he went too far in his champion- 
ship of the humble. Chapter xxxviii. of The 
Old Curiosity Shop contains a paragraph of 
moralizing in which it is declared that the love 
of home felt by the poor is " of truer metal '* 
than anything of the kind possible in the 
wealthy. Twenty years later Dickens would 
not have spoken so inconsiderately. Some- 
times, too, he goes beyond the safe mean in his 
exhibition of virtuous humility. The lad Kit, 
who not only " came back to work out the 
shilling," but repels with a sense of injury an 
offer of new service at higher wages, comes 
dangerously near to the kind of thing one 
meets with in stories written for Sunday School 
prizes. Many readers, I daresay, are of opinion 
that Dickens is constantly falling into this 
error ; that it is his besetting sin. Well, that 
is one way of regarding the matter ; on the 
alternative point of view I have sufficiently 
insisted. 

The enviously discontented poor seldom 
come forward in his pages ; indeed, the dis- 
contented in any spirit are not often shown. 
An interesting exception is his paper on 
"Tramps," in the Uncommercial Traveller, 
where tramps of every species are discussed 
with much knowledge and infinite humour, and 
without a trace of sentimentality. We hear the 



28o CHARLES DICKENS 

whining of the rascals, and their curses when 
they fail to get anything by it; their hopeless 
brutality is set forth with most refreshing 
candour. Of characters in the novels, there is 
no low-class malcontent worth mention except 
Charley Hexam. He, indeed, makes a very 
good exception, for he is precisely the one 
member of his class whom Dickens shows as 
tolerably educated. The date of Our Mutual 
Friend is 1865 ; the great scheme of national 
education was to be established only five years 
later ; and had Dickens been able to foresee 
every result of 1870, he could not have drawn 
a more truly prophetic figure than Charley 
Hexam. This youth has every fault that can 
attach to a half-taught club of his particular 
world. He is a monstrous egoist, to begin 
with, and " school " has merely put an edge on 
to the native vice. The world exists solely for 
his benefit ; his " esuriency," to use Carlyle's 
word, has no bounds. Then he is of course a 
snob, and with fair opportunity will develop 
into a petty tyrant with an inclination to active 
cruelty. Something of resemblance exists be- 
tween this fellow and Tom Tulliver ; it is an 
odd coincidence, too, that both should have 
sisters so vastly their superiors, yet alike 
devoted to them. Tom had the advantage of 
country air; he is never quite unwholesome^ 



THE RADICAL 281 

his selfish coarseness of fibre is recognizable as 
old English. But Hexam's pride is of base 
metal, through and through. He is capable 
of swaggering in a bar-room, of lying contempt- 
ibly to an audience of commoner lads. Before 
he was many years older, he became a " secu- 
larist " — quite without conviction, and deliv- 
ered peculiarly blatant lectures ; after that he 
added "socialism," and pointed to himself as 
an example of the man of great talents, who 
had never found a fair chance. Dickens did 
well in giving him for teacher and friend such 
a man as Bradley Headstone, whose passion- 
ate nature (with which one can sympathize well 
enough when it comes to the love-story) must 
needs have an evil influence on Lizzie*s brother. 
But this was not absolutely necessary for the 
development of a Charley Hexam, whose Hke, 
at this moment, . may be found throughout 
London by anyone studying the less happy 
results of the board-school system. 

Of noble discontent, Dickens cannot be 
said to give us any picture at all. The in- 
ventor in Little Dorrit, foiled by the Circum- 
locutionists, is too mild and dreamy to nourish 
a spirit of revolt ; Stephen Blackpool in Hard 
Times would hold rebellion a sin ; and as for 
the rank and file of hungry creatures, they 
seem never to have heard. that there is move- 



282 CHARLES DICKENS 

ment in the land, that voices are raised on their 
behalf, and even to some purpose. No; their 
hope is in the Cheeryble brothers ; not at 
all in Chartist or in Radical or in Chris- 
tian Socialist. Very significant the omission. 
Dickens, for all his sympathy, could not look 
with entire approval on the poor grown articu- 
late about their wrongs. He would not have 
used the phrase, but he thought the thought, 
that humble folk must know " their station." 
He was a member of the middle class, and as 
far from preaching " equality " in its social 
sense as any man that ever wrote. Essentially 
a member of the great middle class, and on 
that very account able to do such work, to 
strike such blows, for the cause of humanity 
in his day and generation. 



CHAPTER XI 

COMPARISONS 

Twenty years ago a familiar topic for debating 
societies was a comparison of the literary char- 
acteristics of Dickens and Thackeray — (or of 
Thackeray and Dickens, I forget which). Not 
Impossibly, the theme Is still being discussed 
In country towns or London suburbs. Of 
course. It was always an absurdity, the points 
of difference between these authors being so 
manifest, and their mutual relations In litera- 
ture so easy of dismissal, that debate in the 
proper sense there could be none. As to which 
of the two was the'" greater novelist,'' the ques- 
tion may be left for answer to those who are ca- 
pable of seriously propounding it. He will be 
most positive in judgment whose acquaintance 
with the novelists' writings is least profound. 

It seems to me, however, that we may, with- 
out waste of time, suggest comparison in cer- 
tain points between Dickens and one or two 
of his foreign contemporaries, writers of fiction 
who, like the English master, were pre-occu- 
pled with social questions, and evinced special 



284 CHARLES DICKENS 

knowledge in dealing with the life of the poor. 
Balzac, Victor Hugo, DostoiefFsky, Daudet — 
these names readily occur to one, and I shall 
not err in assuming familiarity with their prin- 
cipal works in those who have cared to read so 
far in this little book. Of course I have no 
intention of saying all that might easily be said 
as to points of contrast : so thorough an Eng- 
lishman as Dickens must needs differ in par- 
ticulars innumerable from authors marked on 
their side by such strong national character- 
istics. Enough to indicate certain lines of 
similarity, or divergence, which, pursued in 
thought, may help to a complete understand- 
ing of our special subject. 

Evidently there is a difference on the 
threshold between Dickens and three of the 
foreign authors named — a difference which 
seems to involve the use of that very idle word 
"realism." Novels such as those of Balzac 
are said to be remorseless studies of actual life; 
whereas Dickens, it is plain, never pretends to 
give us life itself, but a selection, an adapta- 
tion. Balzac, calling his work the "human 
comedy," is supposed to have smiled over 
this revelation of the littleness of man, his fre- 
quent sordidness, his not uncommon bestiality. 
Dostoieffsky, absorbed in compassionate study 
of the wretched^ the desolate, the oppressed. 



COMPARISONS 285 

by no means goes out of his way to spare our 
delicacy or our feelings ; and Daudet, so like 
to Dickens in one or two aspects, matures into 
a conception of the novel which would have 
been intolerable to the author of David Cop- 
ferfield — cultivates a frankness regarding the 
physical side of life which in England would 
probably have to be defended before legal 
authorities with an insular conception of art. 
Realists, we say ; men with an uncompro- 
mising method, and utterly heedless as to 
whether they give pleasure or pain. 

The distinction is in no way a censure upon 
Dickens. As soon as a writer sits down to 
construct a narrative, to imagine human beings, 
or adapt those he knows to changed circum- 
stances, he enters a world distinct from the 
actual, and, call himself what he may, he 
obeys certain laws, certain conventions, with- 
out which the art of fiction could not exist. 
Be he a true artist, he gives us pictures which 
represent his own favourite way of looking at 
life ; each is the world in little, and the world 
as he prefers it. So that, whereas execution 
may be rightly criticized from the common 
point of view, a master's general conception 
of the human tragedy or comedy must be ac- 
cepted as that without which his work could 
not take form. Dickens has just as much 



286 CHARLES DICKENS 

right to his optimism in the world of art, as 
Balzac to his bitter smile. Moreover, if it 
comes to invidious comparisons, one may 
safely take it for granted that " realism " in 
its aggressive shapes is very far from being 
purely a matter of art. The writer who shows 
to us all the sores of humanity, and does 
so with a certain fury of determination, may 
think that he is doing it for art's sake; but 
in very truth he is enjoying an attack upon 
the order of the universe — always such a 
tempting form of sport. Well, Dickens was 
also combative, and enjoyed his palpable hits ; 
only, his quarrel was with certain people, and 
certain ways of thought, never with human 
nature or the world at large. 

There are orders of imaginative work. A 
romance is distinct from a novel ; so is a fairy 
tale. But there can be drawn only a mislead- 
ing, futile distinction between novels realistic 
and idealistic. It is merely a question of 
degree and of the author's temperament. 

In Balzac's Le Cousin Pons are two figures 
amiable, eccentric, such as Dickens might 
have conceived in other surroundings. Pons, 
the collector of bric-a-brac, and his friend 
Schmucke, are good, simple creatures, and 
Balzac loves them; but so bent is he on 
showing that life, or at all events Paris, is a 



COMPARISONS 287 

vast machine for torturing and crushing the 
good (and therefore the weak), that these two 
old men end in the most miserable way, amid 
baseness and cruelty which triumphs over 
them. We know how Dickens would have 
shaped the story. In art he was incapable of 
such sternness ; and he utterly refused to be- 
lieve that fate was an irresponsible monster. 
Compare the Maison Vauquer, in Le Pere 
Goriot, with " Todgers's " in Martin Chuzzle- 
wii. No one will for a moment believe that 
Dickens's picture differs from that of Balzac 
because the one Is a bit of London, the other 
of Paris. Nor is it a question of defect of 
humour; Mme. Vauquer (nee de Conflans) 
and her group of boarders in the Rue Neuve- 
Sainte-Genevieve, are presented with sufficient 
suggestion of humorous power. But Balzac 
delights in showing us how contemptible and 
hateful such persons can be ; whereas Dickens 
throws all his heart on to the side of the 
amusing and the good. When sheets are 
wanted to shroud the dead body of poor old 
Goriot (a victim of atrocious greed), Mme. 
Vauquer exclaims : " Prends les draps re- 
tournes ; par Dieu ! cest toujour s assez hon 
pour un mortJ' It Is a fierce touch, and 
Dickens could no more have achieved It In 
a novel than have uttered the words in his 



288 CHARLES DICKENS 

own person. There is a difference of artistic 
method. We are free to express a preference 
for this or for that way of presenting life ; but 
such preference involves no judgment. On 
either side, a host of facts can be brought for- 
ward to justify the artist's view ; the critic's 
part is merely to inquire how the work has 
been executed. 

One finds in Balzac a stronger intellect, but 
by no means a greater genius. Very much 
wider is his scope in character and circum- 
stance ; he sees as clearly and as minutely as 
Dickens ; but I doubt whether he ever imparts 
his vision with the vividness of Dickens at his 
best ; and assuredly his leagues of description 
fail in art when compared with the English 
author's mode of showing us what he wishes. 
In construction they are both flagrantly defec- 
tive, though erring in different ways. 

Let the critic who dismisses Dickens's fig- 
ures as types, turn for a moment to Victor 
Hugo's masterpiece, Les Miserables. What 
are we to call the personages in this story ? 
Put side by side the detective Javert and In- 
spector Bucket. It is plain at once that in the 
latter we have an individual, a living man full 
of peculiarities, some professional, others native 
to himself; he represents, no doubt, the Lon- 
don police force of his day, but only as any 



COMPARISONS 289 

very shrewd, brisk, and conscientious inspector 
would have done so. Javert, on the other 
hand, is an incarnation of the penal code ; 
neither more nor less. Never for one instant 
do we mistake him for a being such as walks 
the earth. He is altogether superhuman ; he 
talks the language of an embodied Idea ; it 
cannot surprise us however ubiquitous he 
seems or however marvellous his scent for a 
criminal. Go through the book and it is al- 
ways the same thing. Jean Valjean might be 
likened to Prometheus ; he is a type of suffer- 
ing humanity, he represents all the victims of 
social wrong. Let his adventures go to any 
length of the heroic, the surprising, we do not 
protest ; he is not one man but many. Fan- 
tine, too ; what is she but the spirit of out- 
raged womanhood ? Even as Cosette stands 
for childhood robbed of its natural inheritance, 
trodden under foot by a greedy and ferocious 
civilization. Les Miserahles is one of the 
world's great books. That cannot be said of 
any one of Dickens's ; but the reason is cer- 
tainly not because he failed in characterization. 
Les Miserahles is not rightly to be called a 
novel ; it belongs to the region of symbolic 
art. And my only reason for putting it beside 
Dickens's work is to make manifest at a glance 
his superior quality as a writer of fiction. 

19 



290 CHARLES DICKENS 

Hugo is concerned with wide historical ques- 
tions, with great forces in the life of the world; 
he probes the theory of society, searches into 
the rights of the individual ; he judges man ; 
he seeks to justify the ways of God. He is 
international ; and his vast drama belongs to 
all modern time. He is in the faithfulest 
sense of the word a democrat ; for him there 
can be, in the very nature of things, no rul- 
ing voice save that of the people ; all other 
potentates and lawgivers are mere usurpers, to 
be suffered for a time. Dickens, though en- 
gaged heart and soul in the cause of the op- 
pressed, fights their battle on a much narrower 
ground. The laws he combats are local, be- 
longing, for the most part, to certain years of 
grace. His philosophy is the simplest pos- 
sible, and all his wisdom is to be read in the 
Sermon on the Mount. Democrat he is none, 
but a hearty English Radical. His force is in 
his intense nationality, enabling him to utter 
the thoughts of voiceless England. Yet of 
necessity there are many points at which his 
work and Hugo's touch together, inviting 
comparison. Child-life is one of them. I 
have spoken of Dickens's true pathos ; but 
is there anything in all his stories that springs 
from so deep a fount of tender pity as that 
vision of Cosette putting out her wooden shoe 



COMPARISONS 291 

at Christmas? For the rest, Dickens's chil- 
dren are generally creatures of flesh and blood; 
Cosette, save at moments, belongs to the spirit 
world. An inferiority in the Englishman — if 
we care to glance at it — becomes plain by a 
contrast of his wronged women with Fantine. 
Abstractions these, as we have already noted, 
and therefore an illustration of what his people 
for the most part are not; as abstractions, how 
thin and futile and untrue when brought into 
the light of a noble creation, such as the 
mother of Cosette. At root, both writers 
have the same faith in man ; they glorify the 
same virtues. But for Dickens life is so much 
simpler — and so greatly more amusing. From 
his point of view, how easily all could be set 
right, if the wealthy and the powerful were but 
reasonably good-natured — with an adequate 
sense of humour I 

He is wroth with institutions ; never bitter 
against fate, as is so often the case in " realistic " 
novels of our time. Something of this, though 
for the most part unconsciously, appears in the 
great Russian novelist Dostoieffsky, whose 
work, in which Dickens would have found 
much to like and admire, shows so sombre a 
colouring beside the English novels. It is 
gloomy, for one reason, because it treats of the 
empire of the Tzar ; for another, because Dos- 



292 CHARLES DICKENS 

toIefFsky, a poor and suffering man, gives us 
with immense power his own view of penury 
and wretchedness. Not seldom, in reading 
him, one is reminded of Dickens, even of 
Dickens's peculiarities in humour. The note 
of his books is sympathy ; a compassion so 
intense as often to seem morbid — which in- 
deed it may have been, as a matter of fact. 
One novel is called The Idiot, a study of mental 
weakness induced by epilepsy. Mark the dis- 
tance between this and Barnaby Rudge ; here 
we have the pathos of saddest truth, and no 
dallying with half-pleasant fancies. But read 
the opening of the story called in its French 
translation Humilies et Offenses ; it is not im- 
possible that Dickens's direct influence worked 
with the writer in those pages describing the 
hero's kindness to the poor little waif who 
comes under his care ; in any case, spiritual 
kindred is manifest. And in how alien a world, 
regarding all things outward ! 

Dostoieffsky's masterpiece. Crime and Pun- 
ishment, abounds in Dickens-like touches in its 
lighter passages. Extravagances of character 
delighted him, and he depicted them with a 
freer hand than Dickens was permitted or would 
have cared to use. Suppose the English 
novelist born in Russia, he might well have 
been the author of the long scene at the begin- 



COMPARISONS 293 

ning of the book, where Sonia*s father, the 
eccentric drunkard, makes himself known to us 
in his extraordinary monologue. For that 
matter, with such change of birth and breeding, 
Dickens might well have written the whole 
book, which is a story of a strange murder, of 
detective ingenuity, of a ruined girl who keeps 
her soul clean, and of a criminal redeemed by 
love and faith in Christ ; the scene throughout 
being amid the darkness, squalor, and grotesque 
ugliness of Russia's capital. Dostoieffsky is 
invariably pure'of tone and even decorous from 
our own peculiar point of view ; his superiority 
as a " realist ** to the author of David Copper- 
field consists merely in his frank recognition of 
facts which Dickens is obliged to ignore or to 
hint with sighing timidity. Sonia could not 
have been used by the Englishman as a heroine 
at all ; as a subordinate figure he would have 
turned her to his most stagey purposes, though 
meaning all the time an infinitude of gentleness 
and sympathy ; instead of a most exceptional 
girl (by no means, I think, impossible), she 
would have become a glaring unreality, giving 
neither pleasure nor solace to any rational 
reader. The crucial chapter of the story, the 
magnificent scene in which RaskolnikofF makes 
confession to Sonia, is beyond Dickens, as we 
know him : it would not have been so but for 



294 CHARLES DICKENS 

the defects of education and the social prejudices 
which forbade his tragic gift to develop. Ras- 
kolnikofF himself, a typical Russian, a man of 
brains maddened by hunger and by the sight 
of others hungry, is the kind of character Dick- 
ens never attempted to portray ; his motives, 
his reasonings could not be comprehended by 
an Englishman of the lower-middle class. And 
the murder itself — Bill Sikes, Jonas Chuzzle- 
wit, show but feebly after we have watched that 
lank student, with the hatchet under his coat, 
stealing up the stairs ; when we have seen him 
do his deed of blood, and heard the sound of 
that awful bell tinkling in the still chamber. 
DostoiefFsky's work is indescribably powerful 
and finely tragic ; the murders in Dickens are 
too vulgar of motive greatly to impress us, and 
lack the touch of high imaginativeness. 

Little as he cared for foreign writers, we 
learn that Dickens found pleasure in a book 
called Le Petit Chose^ the first novel of a very 
young author named Alphonse Daudet. It 
would have been strange indeed had he not 
done so ; for Daudet at that time as closely 
resembled Dickens himself as a Frenchman 
possibly could. To repeated suggestions that 
he modelled his early work on that of his 
great contemporary, M. Daudet has replied 
with a good-humoured shake of the head ; and 



COMPARISONS 295 

as an illustration of how one can seem to 
plagiarize without doing anything of the kind, 
he mentions that he was about to give to the 
little lame girl, Desiree Delobelle, the occupa- 
tion of dolFs dressmaker, when a friend made 
known to him the existence of just such a figure 
in Our Mutual Friend. This being the case, 
we can only wonder at the striking resemblance 
between his mind and that of Dickens. Not 
only is it a question of literary manner, and of 
the humour v/hich is a leading characteristic 
in both ; the Frenchman is penetrated with a 
delicate sense, a fine enjoyment of the virtues 
and happiness of simple domestic life, and in 
a measure has done for France what Dickens 
in his larger way did for England, shaping 
examples of sweetness and goodness among 
humble folk, which have been taken to their 
hearts by his readers. Belisaire, in Fromont 
Jeune^ is a typical instance ; and the like may 
be found even in his later novels, where, as 
some think, he has been unhappily led after 
false gods by the literary fashion of his time. 
Real life has frequently supplied him with an 
artistic motive precisely such as Dickens re- 
joiced in finding; for example, "pere Joyeuse " 
in Le Nabab, the clerk who, having lost his 
employment, shrinks from letting his family 
know, and leaves home each morning as if 



296 CHARLES DICKENS 

going to the office as usual — a delightful 
sketch, done with perfection of kindliness and 
humour. Then, there is Daudet's fine com- 
passion. He says in his autobiographic 
sketches : " Je me sens en cceur r amour de Dick- 
ens pour les disgracies et les pauvres, les enfances 
melies aux miseres des grandes villes ; " and 
this is abundantly proved throughout his 
writings. 

Daudet has a great advantage in his mastery 
of construction. Where, as in Fromont Jeune, 
he constructs too well, that is to say, on the 
stage model, we see what a gain it was to him 
to have before his eyes the Paris stage of the 
Second Empire instead of that of London in 
the early Victorian time. Moreover, he is free 
from English fetters ; he can give us such a 
portrait as Sidonie, done with wonderful truth 
yet with a delicacy, even a tenderness, which 
keeps it thoroughly in tone with his pure 
ideals. I do not speak of the later novels, 
much as I see to admire and like in them ; only 
of the time when his resemblance to Dickens 
was most pronounced. Jack's mother, the 
feather-brained Ida de Barancy, belongs to a 
very different order of art from anything 
attained in female portraiture by the English 
novelist. In his men, too, this advantage is 
often very noticeable. Delobelle the illus- 



COMPARISONS 297 

trious, and the mouthing D'Argenton, have 
points of character which easily suggest persons 
in Dickens ; but they belong to a world which 
has more colour, more variety, and the writer 
does not fear to present them completely. 
These things notwithstanding, Dickens's work 
is of course beyond comparison wider in scope 
and richer in significance. We may concede 
to Daudet all his superiority as a finished artist, 
and only become the more conscious of Dick- 
ens's unapproachable genius. 

Telling us of the hapless lad from whom he 
modelled his Jack, M. Daudet touches on 
points of difference between the characters in 
life and in fiction ; the real Jack had not al- 
together that refinement which heightens our in- 
terest in the hero of the novel. '' Ilfaut dire^' 
adds the writer, " que le peuple ignore bien des 
delicatesses^ des susceptibilites morales'' Could 
such a remark possibly have fallen from the 
pen of Dickens, even when not employed 
upon fiction ? Of " the people " he could 
neither have said nor thought it ; was it not 
to "the people" that he turned when he 
wanted an example of the finest delicacy of 
heart, the most sensitive moral susceptibility ? 
Perhaps it was just this lack of faith that held 
Daudet from fulfilling what seemed the promise 
of his early time, Such lack of faith in the 



298 CHARLES DICKENS 

multitude is not difficult to account for in a 
very acute observer. It was especially hard 
to maintain in face of a literary movement 
which devoted itself to laying bare the worst 
of popular life. The brothers Goncourt, Flau- 
bert, and M. Zola were not companions likely 
to fortify a naive ideal. It is just possible that 
they inflicted serious injury upon Daudet's 
work, and robbed France of a precious gift — 
the books he might have written but for the 
triumph of " realism." Dickens, who died 
before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian 
war, can barely have suspected the lines that 
literature was to follow in the next decade ; to 
the end he represented in himself a literary 
force which had burst upon the world with irre- 
sistible charm, had held its way victoriously 
for five-and-thirty years, and seemed as far as 
ever from losing its dominion over English 
readers. The likelihood is that his unwaver- 
ing consistency will stand him in better stead 
through the century to come than any amount 
of that artistic perfection which only a small 
class can appreciate and enjoy. 



CHAPTER XII 

THE LATTER YEARS 

It is the privilege of a great writer to put into 
his work the finest qualities of his heart and 
brain, to make permanent the best part of him- 
self, and through that to influence the world. 
In speaking of Dickens's triumphs as an au- 
thor, I have felt that the most fervent praise 
could not err by excess ; every time I open 
his books, as the years go on, it is with ever 
more of wonder, delight, admiration, and love. 
To point out his shortcomings as a man could 
give little satisfaction to one who thus thinks 
of him ; merely for the sake of completeness 
in my view of his life and works, I feel it neces- 
sary to glance at those disastrous latter years 
which show him as a " public entertainer," all 
true peace and leisure at an end, shortening his 
life that he might be able to live without pecu- 
niary anxiety. Carlyle said that the story of 
Charles Dickens's doings in America "tran- 
scended in tragic interest, to a thinking reader, 
most things one has seen in writing." We 



300 CHARLES DICKENS 

see plainly enough what a deplorable mistake 
it was, and men such as Forster, Dickens's 
true friends, not only saw it at the time, but 
did their utmost in protest. He himself had 
no misgiving — or would confess none. In 
the words with which he prefaced his first paid 
reading (1858) he said he had satisfied him- 
self, that to adopt this career could involve 
no possible compromise of the credit and in- 
dependence of literature, and that whatever 
brought a public man and his public face to 
face, on terms of mutual confidence and respect, 
was of necessity a good thing. Both asser- 
tions may be contested. Carlyle, and many 
another man of letters, saw very grave objec- 
tions to semi-theatrical " touring " on the score 
of the credit of literature ; and as to the rela- 
tions between " a public man " and his ad- 
mirers, it is very doubtful whether a novelist 
should bear that title at all. But Dickens's 
intimate relations with the theatre made it im- 
possible for him to give due weight to these 
objections. Moreover he was a very keen man 
of business, and could not resist the tempta- 
tion of enriching himself by means which, in 
themselves, were thoroughly congenial to him. 
For he enjoyed those readings. The first 
he ever gave — that of his Christmas Carol to 
a little group of friends — was arranged on his 



THE LATTER YEARS 



301 



own suggestion, and he read several times for 
charitable purposes before he began to do so 
for profit. Not without reason he felt that all 
who knew him in his books were as personal 
friends to him, and he to them ; he delighted 
in standing before those vast audiences, and 
moving them to laughter or to tears. Opin- 
ions differ as to his merits as a reader, but it is 
plain that the public thought him insurpassable. 
He had always wished to shine as an actor ; as 
a " reader " (it was in truth recitation, and not 
reading) he came very near to that — especially 
in such efforts as the murder scene from Oliver 
Twist, The life, too, one of ceaseless travel 
and excitement, suited him at the time when 
he was making grave changes in his domestic 
circumstances ; changes which may or may 
not have been inevitable, but which doubtless 
helped to urge Rim along the fatal course. 
Forster's Biography makes it clear that, from 
1857 onwards, Dickens suffered somewhat in 
character from the effects of this public life; 
nothing like so much as in health, but he was 
no longer quite the man of his best literary 
years. Remember the intensely practical strain 
in his nature. As a very young man, he al- 
lowed himself to be put at a disadvantage with 
publishers ; but this was soon, and energeti- 
cally, set right ; afterwards, he transacted the 



302 CHARLES DICKENS 

business of his books with high commercial 
aptitude. It was the same in everything; 
subtract his genius, and we have a most ca- 
pable, upright, vigorous man of business — 
the very ideal (so much better than all but a 
few actual examples) of commercial England. 
It is a surprising combination ; such quali- 
ties united with those which characterized 
the author Charles Dickens. To minds of a 
certain type, there appears to be the utmost 
satisfaction in pointing out that Shakespeare 
made money, and built " the trimmest house 
in Stratford town;" but who can seriously 
suggest that, even mutatis mutandis, Shake- 
speare's business aptitudes and success were 
comparable with those of Dickens ? The 
author of Hamlet indubitably had common 
sense, but, most happily, business as it is un- 
derstood among us nowadays had not been 
dreamt of in Elizabethan England, and one 
may very safely assert that Shakespeare was 
no distinguished merchant even in the sense 
of that day. Dickens might easily have be- 
come a great capitalist ; and his generosity 
would have secured him against any self- 
reproach when treading the ways of capitalism. 
He reflected with annoyance on the serious 
loss occasioned him by the lack of American 
copyright; granted the opportunity, he could 



THE LATTER YEARS 303 

have drawn up an International arrangement in 
this matter which would have been a model of 
clear-headed justice. After all, what was the 
financial result of his brilliant and laborious 
life ? He had a large family ; his expenses 
were considerable ; he bought himself a coun- 
try house, which became to him, as an occu- 
pation of his leisure, a small Abbotsford. And 
at his death he leaves an estimated total of 
£93^000, The merest bagatelle, from a com- 
mercial point of view. His readings seem to 
have brought him, altogether, a matter of 
some ^40,000. What man of business, with 
a world-wide reputation, would be content to 
toil to the detriment of his health for such re- 
sults ? I go into these details merely to sug- 
gest how a man such as Dickens must have 
felt regarding the pecuniary question. Save 
in reference to American copyright, he did not 
complain ; that would have been Ignoble, and 
inconsistent with his habits of mind. But it 
seemed to him indispensable that he should 
gain more money than would arrive from his 
literary work. His sons must go forth into 
the world as English gentlemen — a term im- 
plying so much ; his daughters must be made 
independent; his own mode of life must be on 
a scale recognized as " respectable " by middle- 
class England. One need not be much of an 



304 CHARLES DICKENS 

optimist to foresee that, as in days gone by, so 
in a time to come, the spectacle of such a man 
so beset will be altogether impossible, and the 
record of such a life will become a matter for 
wonder and sad smiling. 

With the utmost precision of punctuality in 
all details of daily life, he combined a char- 
acter of sanguine impulsiveness, and as a result 
thereof could not endure restraints and burdens 
which ordinary men accept as a matter of course. 
If he desired a thing, he must at once obtain 
it ; or at all events aim at obtaining it, and 
with all his energy. He could work day after 
day — the kind of work which demands a 
patience, an assiduity, a self-control unintel- 
ligible to the mass of mankind ; could exhibit 
in himself, and exact from others, a rare con- 
scientiousness in things small and great ; but 
when it came to any kind of constraint which 
was not imposed by his own temperament he 
failed at once. The moralist may remark, in 
his dry way, that no man can receive so much 
of the good things of life, and remain unspoilt ; 
that Dickens, moreover, was a very unlikely 
man to go through the ordeal of world-wide 
flattery, and draw from it moral benefit. The 
wonder is that Dickens was spoilt so little. In 
a day when there exists no writer of supreme 
acceptance, we are in danger of forgetting what 



THE LATTER YEARS 305 

his popularity meant. I suppose that for at 
least five-and-twenty years of his life, there 
was not an English-speaking household in the 
world, above the class which knows nothing of 
books, where his name was not as familiar as 
that of any personal acquaintance, and where an 
allusion to characters of his creating could fail 
to be understood. When seeking a title for 
the periodical eventually called Household 
Words- — it was in 1849 — he seriously sug- 
gested " Charles Dickens : Conducted by 
Himself" It was, he admitted, "a strange 
idea, but with decided advantages." In any 
other writer then living, the idea would have 
been strange indeed, and of anything but de- 
cided advantage. Dickens could entertain it 
without egoism, without ridicule ; far and wide, 
at home and abroad, hands would have clutched 
eagerly at the magazine bearing such a super- 
scription. He passed it over ; but whatever the 
title of the paper he edited. Household Words 
or All the Tear Rounds the name it bore in all 
minds was no other than " Charles Dickens." 

It is easy to distinguish between the British 
characteristic of practicality, and the unpleasant 
attribute of worldliness ; but the intensely prac- 
tical man seldom escapes a tincture of that 
neighbouring vice. In dismissing as " fanciful " 
every intrusion of the pure idea^ the English 

20 



3o6 CHARLES DICKENS 

guard themselves against certain risks, and pre- 
serve a pretty even current of national life ; 
but they pay a penalty, understood or not. 
Dickens is an illustration of it. I cannot do 
better than copy the words written on this sub- 
ject by his most intimate friend ; they occur in 
the chapter which tells all that need be told 
about his domestic troubles. " Not his genius 
only, but his whole nature, was too exclusively 
made up of sympathy for, and with, the real in 
its most intense form, to be sufficiently provided 
against failure in the realities around him. 
There was for him no ' city of the mind ' against 
outward ills for Inner consolation and shelter. 
... By his very attempts to escape the world, 
he was driven back into the thick of it. But 
what he would have sought there, it supplies to 
none ; and to get the infinite out of anything 
so finite, has broken many a stout heart." 
This, observe, is spoken of a man who was not 
only " good " in most meanings of the word, 
but had a profound feeling for the moral sig- 
nificance of the religion he professed. We see 
the type of nineteenth-century Englishman ; 
the breed of men who established a commercial 
supremacy which is (or very lately was) the 
wonder, the envy, and the jest of the outer 
world. You cannot create Lancashire and 
Yorkshire if at the same time you have to 



THE LATTER YEARS 307 

guard a " city of the mind ; " much too embar- 
rassing would be the multitude of uneasy ques- 
tions rushing in at every new step. This 
typical Englishman has no " detachment." In 
work or play, he must press onward by the 
world's highroad. In 1857 Dickens wrote to 
Forster : " I have now no relief but in action. 
I am become incapable of rest. I am quite 
confident I should rust, break, and die, if I 
spared myself. Much better to die, going. 
What I am in that way, nature made me first, 
and my way of life has of late, alas ! confirmed." 
It was a moment of peculiar stress, but that 
was not needed to explain the letter. As I 
said in the early pages of this essay, a better 
education might have done much for Dickens; 
yet it could hardly have helped him to that 
" removed ground " where some few men, even 
in thriving England, were able to possess 
their souls in peace. 

His life was ceaseless activity, mental and 
physical. After an ailing childhood, he grew 
into health which perhaps was never robust, 
but which allowed him to expend the energy of 
three ordinary mortals. He thought nothing 
of a twenty-mile walk in the odd hours before 
dinner, and would not be deterred from it by 
rain or snow. His position obliged him to 
give a great deal of time to social and public 



3o8 CHARLES DICKENS 

engagements ; yet they never interfered with 
his literary tasks. He was always ready to 
take the chair at a meeting for any charitable 
purpose with which he sympathized, and his 
speeches on these occasions were masterpieces 
of their kind. Three of them are worthy of 
a permanent place among his writings : that 
spoken on behalf of the Child's Hospital ; that 
in which, at the dinner of the Newspaper Press 
Fund, he gave his recollections of life as a re- 
porter; that for the Theatrical Fund, in which 
he sketches, as no other man ever did or could 
have done, the whole world of the stage, with 
the drollest humour and the kindliest note of 
pathos. With a popular audience on such 
occasions he was most perfectly in touch. 
Never for a moment did his style or thought 
rise above their heads ; never was there a sus- 
picion of condescending. He knew how to 
bestow pleasant flattery, without ever passing 
the limits of tact and taste. If ladies were 
among his hearers, he always put in a word of 
jesting gallantry which was exactly what they 
liked and expected. Withal, his talk invariably 
made appeal to the good and unselfish instincts ; 
it was always admirable common-sense ; it was 
always morally profitable. 

The power he had of pursuing his imagina- 
tive tasks amid distractions which most men 



THE LATTER YEARS 309 

would find fatal, is especially interesting. Read 
Forster*s description of the state of things in 
Dickens's house just before the Christmas of 
1856, whilst Little Dorrit was being written. 
" Preparations for the private play had gone on 
incessantly, and in turning the schoolroom into 
a theatre sawing and hammering worthy of 
Babel continued for weeks.'* The novelist be- 
came stage carpenter as well as stage manager. 
"All day long," he writes in a letter, "a 
labourer heats size over the fire in a great 
crucible. We eat it, drink it, breathe it, and 
smell it. Seventy paint pots (which came 
in a van) adorn the stage." The private 
play was acted night after night to overflowing 
audiences, and not till the 20th of January was 
the house clear and quiet. But fiction-writing 
went on as usual, with never a hint at difficulty 
ov/ing to circumstances. 

In his letter-writing alone, Dickens did a 
life's literary work. Nowadays no one thinks 
of writing such letters ; I mean, letters of such 
length and detail, for the quality is Dickens's 
own. He evidently enjoyed this use of the 
pen. Page after page of Forster's " Life " is 
occupied with transcription from private cor- 
respondence, and never a line of this but is 
thoroughly worthy of print and preservation. 
If he makes a tour in any part of the British 



3IO CHARLES DICKENS 

IsleSj he writes a full description of all he sees, 
of everything that happens, and writes it with 
such gusto, such mirth, such strokes of fine 
picturing, as appear in no other private 
letters ever given to the public. Naturally- 
buoyant in all circumstances, a holiday gave 
him the exhilaration of a school-boy. See 
how he writes from Cornwall, when on a trip 
with two or three friends, in 1 843. " Heavens ! 
if you could have seen the necks of bottles, 
distracting in their immense variety of shape, 
peering out of the carriage pockets ! If you 
could have witnessed the deep devotion of the 
postboys, the maniac glee of the waiters ! If 
you could have followed us into the earthy 
old churches we visited, and into the strange 
caverns on the gloomy sea-shore, and down 
into the depths of mines, and up to the tops 
of giddy heights, where the unspeakably green 
water was roaring, I don't know how many 
hundred feet below ! . . . I never laughed in 
my life as I did on this journey. It would 
have done you good to hear me. I was chok- 
ing and gasping and bursting the buckle off 
the back of my stock, all the way. And 
Stanfield " — the painter — " got into such 
apoplectic entanglements that we were obliged 
to beat him on the back with portmanteaus 
before we could recover him." 



THE LATTER YEARS 311 

The mention of "bottles, distracting in their 
immense variety," leads one to speak of the 
convivial temper so constantly exhibited in 
Dickens's letters and books. It might be 
easily imagined that he was a man of large 
appetite and something of a toper. Nothing 
of the kind; when it came to actual eating 
and drinking, no man was more habitually 
moderate. I am not much in the way of at- 
tending "temperance" meetings, and cannot 
say whether the advocates of total abstinence 
make a point of holding up Dickens's works 
to reprobation; but I should hardly think they 
look upon him with great favour. Indeed, it 
is an odd thing that, writing so much of the 
London poor, he so seldom refers to the 
curse of drunkenness. Of drinking there is 
any amount, but its results serve only for 
gaiety or comic extravagance. One remem- 
bers " Mr. Dolls " in Our Mutual Friend^ a 
victim to the allurements of gin ; he is a pitiful 
creature, and Jenny, the doll's dressmaker, 
suiFers much from his eccentricities ; for all 
that, we are constrained to laugh at him. A 
tragedy of drink Dickens never gives us. 
Criticizing Cruikshank's pictured morality, 
"The Bottle," he points out, truly enough, 
that the artist had seriously erred in making 
the habit of drunkenness arise from mere 



312 CHARLES DICKENS 

conviviality in persons well-to-do ; drink, as 
a real curse, being commonly the result of 
overwork, semi-starvation, vile dwellings, and 
lack of reasonable entertainment. Nowadays 
he would necessarily have viewed the sub- 
ject in a graver light. The national habits 
in this matter have been so greatly changed 
during the last half century, that it would now 
be impossible to glorify the flowing bowl as 
Dickens does in all his most popular writing. 
His works must have had a great part in pro- 
moting that Christmas joviality which of later 
years is manifestly on the decline. Whatever 
the perils of strong drink, his imagination 
could not dispense with it. One is amused 
to find him writing to his friend from America : 
" I wish you drank punch, dear Forster. It *s 
a shabby thing not to be able to picture you 
with that cool green glass." How it hap- 
pened that John Forster, after many years of 
such intimacy, did not make at all events a 
show of handling the " cool green glass," passes 
our comprehension. We hear in Dickens's 
words a note of humorous, yet true, regret; 
it seemed impossible to him that a man could 
be in the enjoyment of his fireside if no alco- 
holic comfort stood at his elbow. Scott, by 
the by, though as hearty and hospitable a man 
as ever lived, and in youth no shirker of the 



THE LATTER YEARS 313 

bottle, always speaks with grave disapproba- 
tion of excessive conviviality. Possibly a dif- 
ference of rank accounts for this ; whilst the 
upper classes were learning to live with pru- 
dence and decency, the lower clung to their 
old habits. Be that as it may, Dickens could 
not throw his weight on the side of teetotalism. 
He held that, if social reforms such as he ad- 
vocated could only be set in motion, the evils 
of drink would tend to disappear of themselves. 
He was right ; the tendency showed itself be- 
yond dispute ; and if, as some think, drunken- 
ness is again increasing among us, the cause 
must be sought in the social conditions of a 
new time — a civilization fraught, perhaps, with 
quite as many evils as those of the old order. 

But not only in holiday time did Dickens 
live with extraordinary gusto ; at his desk he 
was often in the highest spirits. Behold how 
he pictured himself, one day at Broadstairs, 
when he was writing Chuzzlewit. " In a bay 
window in a one-pair sits, from nine o'clock to 
one, a gentleman with rather long hair and no 
neckcloth, who writes and grins, as if he thought 
he were very funny indeed. At one he disap- 
pears, presently emerges from a bathing-machine, 
and may be seen, a kind of salmon-colour 
porpoise, splashing about in the ocean. After 
that, he may be viewed in another bay window 



314 



CHARLES DICKENS 



on the ground floor eating a strong lunch ; 
and after that walking a dozen miles or so, or 
lying on his back on the sand reading a book. 
Nobody bothers him, unless they know he is 
disposed to be talked to, and I am told he is 
very comfortable indeed. He 's as brown as a 
berry, and they do say he is as good as a small 
fortune to the innkeeper, who sells beer and 
cold punch." Here is the secret of such work 
as that of Dickens ; it is done with delight 
— done (in a sense) easily, done with the 
mechanism of mind and body in splendid 
order. Even so did Scott write, though more 
rapidly and with less conscious care ; his chapter 
finished before the world had got up to break- 
fast. Later, Dickens produced novels less 
excellent with much more of mental strain. 
The effects of age could not have shown 
themselves so soon, but for the unfortunate loss 
of energy involved in his non-literary labours. 
Travel was always a great enjoyment to him, 
and when on the Continent he largely appreci- 
ated the spirit of life dissimilar to that of Eng- 
land. His Pictures from Italy are not of great 
value either for style or information ; there are 
better things in his private letters written whilst 
he travelled than in any volume. For Italy he 
had no intellectual preparation ; he saw every- 
thing merely with the eyes of intelligence and 



THE LATTER YEARS 315 

good-humour. Switzerland and France gave 
him a better opportunity. Very noticeable is 
the justice he does to the French character. As 
a proof of this, and of the fact that his genius 
did not desert him when he crossed the Channel, 
nothing could be better than his description 
of M. Beaucourt, the proprietor of a house 
he rented at Boulogne. It is a picture — to 
be put together out of various anecdotes and 
sketches — really wonderful for its charm. In 
this little French bourgeois the great novelist 
had found a man after his own heart — loyal, 
mirthful, sweet-natured, and made only more 
likeable by traits especially amusing to an 
Englishman. " I see little of him now, as, all 
things being bien arrangees^ he is delicate of 
appearing. His wife has been making a trip 
in the country during the last three weeks, but 
(as he mentioned to me with his hat in his 
hand) it was necessary that he should remain 
here, to be continually at the disposition of 
the tenant of the property. (The better to 
do this, he has had roaring dinner-parties of 
fifteen daily ; and the old woman who milks 
the cows has been fainting up the hill, under 
vast burdens of champagne.)" And what could 
be more apt, more beautiful, than the words 
which describe M. Beaucourt as he retires from 
Dickens's presence, after a little dialogue in 



3i6 CHARLES DICKENS 

which he has shown all the gentle goodness 
of his heart ? " He backed himself down the 
avenue with his cap in his hand, as if he were 
going to back himself straight into the even- 
ing star, without the ceremony of dying first." 

This was at the time of the Anglo-French 
alliance in the Russian war. How just he 
could be under less favourable circumstances, 
and how strongly in contrast with that pecul- 
iarly offensive type, the supercilious English- 
man abroad, appears in an account of his 
experiences in leaving Italy by the Austrian 
frontier. " The Austrian police are very strict, 
but they really know how to do business, and 
they do it. And if you treat them like gentle- 
men they will always respond. . . . The thing 
being done at all, could not be better done, or 
more politely — though I daresay if I had been 
sucking a gentish cane all the time, or talking 
in English to my compatriots, it might not un- 
naturally have been different.*' Dickens could 
always hold his own as a man among men. At 
all times he was something more than a writer 
of books ; in this respect, as in literary genius, 
establishing his claim of brotherhood with 
Fielding and with Scott. 

Reading his life, it is with much satisfaction 
that we come to his last appearance as a public 
entertainer. The words with which he took 



THE LATTER YEARS 317 

leave of his audience at St. James's Hall have 
frequently been quoted ; they breathe a sense 
of relief and hopefulness very pathetic in the 
knowledge of what followed. "In but two 
short weeks from this time I hope that you 
may enter, in your own homes, on a new series 
of readings at which my assistance will be indis- 
pensable ; but from these garish lights I vanish 
now for evermore, with a heartfelt, grateful, 
respectful, affectionate farewell." The garish 
lights had done their work upon him, but he 
did not recognize it ; he imagined that he had 
but to sit down in his house at Gadshill, and 
resume the true, the honourable occupation 
of his life, with assurance that before long all 
would be well with him in mind and body. 
It was too late, and the book he promised to 
his hearers remains in our hands a fragment. 

Throughout the pages oi Edwin Drood there 
is premonition of the end. Whether it came 
of feeble health ; whether of the melancholy 
natural in one who has just closed a definite 
epoch of his life, or merely of the theme he 
had chosen, there broods over this interrupted 
writing a shadow of mortality ; not oppres- 
sive ; a shadow as of the summer eventide, 
descending with peaceful hush. We are in 
and about the old minster of a quiet English 
town; among the old graves, to which our 



3i8 CHARLES DICKENS 

attention is constantly directed. It is touch- 
ing to read that final chapter, which must have 
brought back to the writer's mind the days 
long past, when, a little boy, he read and 
dreamt amid the scenes he was now describ- 
ing. There is no gloom ; he shows us such 
a brilliant morning as, after a lifetime, will yet 
linger in the memory from days of earliest 
childhood. He was tired, but not despon- 
dent; true to himself, he saw the sunshine 
above the world's dark places, nourished the 
hope of something beyond this present. 
" Changes of glorious light from moving 
boughs, songs of birds, scents from gardens, 
woods, and fields . . . penetrate into the cathe- 
dral, subdue its earthy odour, and preach the 
Resurrection and the Life." It was no form 
of words ; what he wrote in that solemn mood 
assuredly he believed. Whatever his mis- 
takes and his defects, insincerity had no place 
among them. 

For him, there could be no truer epitaph 
than the words written by Carlyle on hearing 
he was dead : 

"The good, the gentle, high-gifted, ever- 
friendly, noble Dickens — every inch of him 
an honest man." 



